


Forever Tomorrow

by Clocketpatch



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-30
Updated: 2013-11-22
Packaged: 2018-01-02 07:45:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 23,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clocketpatch/pseuds/Clocketpatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The healing effects of the Archangel Network are wearing off, and the only thing that can save the Doctor is a broken friendship which may no longer exist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Victory

**Author's Note:**

> I should admit now, seven years on, that this probably isn't going to be finished. In deference to that, I'm putting notes at the end of the story to sum up what would have happened if my muse hadn't fled out the window. One day, maybe, some miracle will happen and I'll type that ending up properly, but it seems doubtful, especially since the entire story premise has been thoroughly and soundly Joss-ed.
> 
> This is also the story which played a pivotal role in the creation of cake!fic. The relevant typo is in chapter 13. I'm never going to stop being amazed at all of the words and hilarity that slip of the keys has inspired.
> 
> This story is dedicated to Erya who requested it. Though, really, that request has devolved into an exercise in character whumping.

  
****

Chapter 1: In Victory

"Am I alright? Of course I'm all right! I am the Doctor; I'm always alright!"

Jack and Martha exchange a look. The "always alright" Doctor sways on his feet, clutching at the console. Whatever good the Archangel network did for him two hours ago it is wearing off; his wrinkles are returning, his breathing is becoming progressively laboured, and his skin has gone grey and rashy.

"Will you at least sit down for a minute," says Jack, "let Martha examine you?"

"Why? There's nothing wrong with me."

The Doctor skilfully backs his way around the console before Jack can grab him, and _force_ him to sit down. It has been this way for over an hour now, with the Doctor becoming progressively more elusive about his visibly deteriorating health.

Following the Master's death, the Doctor clung to the corpse of his late enemy (friend?) for close to thirty minutes before Jack finally pried him away. The Doctor started punching at him in response (his eyes closed, his fists lashing out blindly, desperately) before grabbing the corpse and dragging it back to the TARDIS. Jack and Martha followed, and things have been falling down a very steep and bumpy hill ever since.

"Doctor, please," Martha says, exasperated. She's just spent a year going through hell and all she wants is to spend some quiet time catching up with her family. She wants to collapse and have a hot bath, a change of clothes, and some chocolate, and then to resume a normal life free from war zones, aliens, and lice. She doesn't think that is very much to ask. She's just saved the world after all —

But so has the Doctor, and as a doctor Martha knows that he needs help; she just hopes she can give it to him. She was trained to deal with uncooperative patients in med. school, but the majority of those lessons (all) had assumed human patients in a hospital setting, not surprisingly fast, mentally and physically unstable aliens with coral struts to dodge and hide behind.

"Do you want to go on a trip Rose?" the Doctor asks.

"I'm not Rose," Martha says for what feels like the hundredth time, "I'm Martha, and you need help. You're disassociating and —"

"Doctor, listen to her," says Jack, making yet another unsuccessful swing to catch the Doctor's arm.

"Let's go to Woman Wept!" says the Doctor, hammering on the controls, and ignored the growing desperation on his companion's faces. The look on his own face shows that he is currently reliving a different reality, and he is happy there. "Have you ever been Rose? You'll like it. A whole ocean frozen in the middle of a storm. "

"I'd like it if you sat down," says Martha, "Just for a minute." He might be happy, but he isn't healthy, and it is a false light he's chasing: a will-o-the-wisp.

The Doctor pauses for a moment as if considering. Then he puts on a childish pout.

"Nope! There's so much to see, and no time to waste. Cities made of song, and rivers that run backwards, and there's never any time for it you know, which is funny, because I'm Time Lord, so you'd think I'd have plenty, but nope! But I can't sleep, mustn't stop, because sleep is for tortoises, and I'm a blue whale, or was that a coyote?"

"Doctor!!" Martha and Jack shout together.

He pays them no heed. Instead he skips carefully over the Master's corpse (ignored since he brought it in), and continues fiddling with the TARDIS controls. There is a manic light in his eyes; a tremor that is forcing him to go on like this when, physically, he appears to be on the brink of collapse. Both Martha and Jack are highly relieved by the fact that the TARDIS is — apparently — in a non-functioning state after all the violations the Master inflicted on her. The last thing either of them wants is an unplanned trip in the badly damaged ship with the badly damaged Doctor in tow.

"What if I give you a present?" Martha asks, assuming a different tact.

The Doctor looks up, childish intrigue stamped across his face along with a healthy dose of suspicion. It breaks Martha's heart. Even with the wrinkles; he looks so young.

"What kind of present?" he asks.

Martha nods to Jack who starts slinking around the back of the console while the Doctor is distracted.

"A marvellous, wonderful present. The best you've ever had."

"I doubt that," says the Doctor smugly, "I've had a lot of presents, and you're just a stupid ape. You aren't even a very nice looking one. I bet you don't have any present at all. I bet you're a liar."

Martha grits her teeth against the insult. A year, a year in hell, and _this_ was her reward. She wants to strangle him. She wants to hold him close and make him better; he is so very, very broken.

"It's a brilliant present," she says, using his favourite word, "but I can't tell you what it is."

"Why not?"

She thinks fast, remembering all the replies her parents ever gave her and her siblings in the weeks leading up to birthdays and Christmas:

"It's a secret. You won't be surprised if I just tell you."

"I could pretend to be surprised," says the Doctor with a trace of his normal pluckiness.

Jack is very close now. He nods at Martha to continue.

"Well… I suppose, but only if you're good, and stay right there, and don't move."

"I'll be as still as a petrified frog!" the Doctor says.

"Good, now, this present —"

The Doctor wiggles with excitement.

"— it's not something you can see, and it's not something you might like at first, but once you understand it you'll be so happy. It's something cruel and kind, and a bit like a riddle, but it doesn't have an answer. It takes time to grow and it's not easily broken when it's strong. It's hard work, and it's no work, and all of the wonders of the universe are nothing in comparison…"

"What is it?" the Doctor asks impatiently, practically dancing on the spot.

Jack nods one last time. He is ready.

"It's behind you," says Martha, tears prickling her eyes.

The Doctor turns around and straight into Jack's waiting arms.

"No, let go, I'll kill you! All of you stupid, meddling… get off!"

Jack hangs on gamely to the kicking and screaming Time Lord as Martha approaches.

"It's friendship," she says, applying pressure to the bundle of nerves on the back of the Doctor's neck and praying that it will have the same effect on Time Lords as it does on humans. She's learned a lot about self-defence and quick ways to render people unconscious during the last year. She's learned a lot of things:

Like how to repress the tender streams of moisture that are threatening to burst out of her eyes and down her cheeks, and how to ignore the screams of dissonant emotion that tear at her heart and make her want to curl up into a little ball on the floor and never move again. To find some dark, safe place and hide. Forever.

The doubt, the uncertainty, the despair…

It works, and the Doctor slumps limply into Jack's arms. He's started to shrink again, turn small, and wizened, and too old to live. He looks so tiny and brittle. Defeated. He twitches in his sleep, his body refusing the enforced rest, still trying to fight…

"How long?" Jack asks, wiping his brow.

"Don't know, not long. We'll have to…" her voice chokes, _he didn't deserve this…_ "We'll have to find some way to restrain him when he comes round. He could hurt himself."

"Okay," says Jack, his voice uncharacteristically gruff. He wipes his brow again, this time including his eyes.

"Then we'll have to —" Martha stops mid-sentence, noticing something.

No.

What?" Jack asks, but Martha doesn't respond.

She refuses to believe it. After a year in hell it couldn't be true. She can feel herself starting to shake, and has to mentally cajole herself into some kind of calm; now is not the time for a nervous breakdown (she wants it though, oh how she longs for that luxury, and soft warm blankets, and chocolate, and kind voices telling her that everything will be okay…)

But not yet. She steadies her breathing, but still finds herself unable to properly reply to Jack's question.

"Look," she croaks, raising a finger to point:

The Master's corpse is gone and the Time Rotor is moving. The room begins to tremble as the TARDIS dematerialises. They are in the vortex, the Doctor is sick and unconscious, and a deadly enemy is hiding somewhere onboard.

"Shit," Jack says, summing the situation up in one word. "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit…"

An ominous bell tolls from the depths of the ship.

Then, in a cliché burst of bad luck, the lights go out, and the floor decides that life as a wall looks rather attractive. The walls don't agree, and, after much tossing, a compromise is reached and the floor takes out a timeshare with the ceiling.

Everything flips over backwards, inside out — nothing makes sense anymore. It's pitch black and they are in the belly of the beast.

Jack groans from the floor/wall/ceiling (in the dark he has no idea) where he has been thrown before being flung across the room to somewhere else. He has no idea what this rough treatment is doing to the Doctor's fragile and aged body. He doesn't want to know. A few moments later he is tossed headfirst into something unyielding and he doesn't have to know because the loss of consciousness makes everything that much darker.

"Shit."


	2. In Pieces

  
  
The lights come back on slowly, reluctantly; the way a child returns home to supper when they know that they've stayed out too late and are due for a lecture. The ship is humming, vibrating like it always does, but the tune is off. It's painful and discordant and —  
  
The light is wrong; too dim, too red (but it's trying to be green in other places and the effect is like Christmas attacked with a sledgehammer). It's all wrong, and it knows it's wrong, and it's scared. That's what's wrong with the ship: it, she, is frightened out of her wits.  
  
Jack's head hurts.  
  
It turns out that he isn't on the floor, ceiling, or wall (not that any of those terms are very fitting at the moment. Up and down more like — though there are places where even that simplicity is called into question). He is jammed on top of what was once the base of a coral support strut. He carefully extracts himself and climbs down to… well, he climbs down.  
  
Debris is everywhere, and what is serving as the floor is slanted and treacherous. Glass and metal crunches under his feet, mixed with something slick that he really doesn't want to think about. He finds Martha partially buried under what looks to be part of the jump seat.  
  
"You okay?" he asks, helping her to her feet.  
  
"Always."  
  
A long gash runs over her left eyebrow, splitting it and twisting towards her ear. She examines it with a hesitant, prodding finger.  
  
"Skull's intact and it's beginning to clot. Good stitches and it won't scar. I've had worse." Her hand drops. "Where's the Doctor?"  
  
Jack has been wondering that himself. He tried to hang onto the unconscious Time Lord during the crash, but things got rough. He remembers the lights going out, hitting something hard, and loosing his grip.  
  
"I don't know."  
  
Martha sits down suddenly and heavily. Dust rises up from the impact dancing and flickering like fairies in the dim, wrong light. She puts her hands over her eyes and seems to sink into herself. If it were anyone else Jack would guess she was crying, but then, who is he to make those judgements? He barely knows this woman. This Martha Jones who saved the world.  
  
"Are you okay?" Jack asks.  
  
"Fine, fine and dandy. Just a bit dizzy. I might have a mild concussion. You'll have to keep me awake for the rest of the day." She peeks out from a web of fingers. "You can do that right?"  
  
"I can, but — you know what I mean: are you okay Martha? Really okay?"  
  
The hands come down revealing red eyes but no tears.  
  
"No, I'm not okay, and neither are you. I'd diagnose PTSD for both of us; suggest counselling, and a long period of rest in familiar surroundings, but we aren't going to get that are we?"  
  
Jack says nothing. There is nothing to say; no truth that doesn't sting.  
  
"I just want it to stop for one minute," Martha says, "Just one minute. I spent a year tracking the time, the hours, the seconds until I would be free and everything would be normal. This isn't normal. This is — do we even know where we are? It could be the end of the universe again. There could be zombies out there getting ready to eat us, or it could be the Roman Empire or Mars or…" She stops, realising that she is hyperventilating.  
  
"I just want to go home," she whispers.  
  
"I know," says Jack, and his voice says that he does know — perhaps better than she can understand. She is being so selfish in all of this. Jack went through a year of hell too, and he can't die. She doesn't want to think what that means when you're being held prisoner by a psychopath like the Master.  
  
And before that: He is immortal. How long has he been wandering the slow path? Does he even have a home to go back to?  
  
He is looking at her with eyes that are baby blue and welled with concern. He's dirtier than she is; his face is barely visible through lines of dirt and pain. He smells like blood, sweat, and excrement. He's very thin — how did she not notice that before? But then, everyone she's seen for months has been half-starved and filthy.  
  
He bends down, patting her hunched up shoulders, trying to comfort her. She is tense; she learned to be tense during her mission; relax for one instant in the Master's world and you died. Cut to pieces by Toclafane. Bombed into oblivion. Sick. Starved. Detained. Ripped apart by hungry, rabid dogs — the perception filter didn't work on animals. She is so tired. She aches everywhere: new aches from the crash and old aches from a year of sleeping rough. She is hungry, and unbearably thirsty, and her clothes are stiff with sweat, blood, and dirt. She can feel the fleas crawling under her collar.  
  
She wishes that she never met the Doctor. Never begged him for a trip. What an idiot she was: he told her it was dangerous. She wanted adventure. She wanted to run along the wind like a hero (wasn't that why she went to med. school in the first place? To be a hero?)  
  
"Come on," says Jack, offering her a hand up. _How can he be so strong?_ "We've got to find the Doctor."  
  
She accepts the hand, and the task, not because she wants to, but because there is nothing else she can do.  
  
 _I'm alright_ , she thinks, _I'm always alright._  
  
  
*   
  
The TARDIS door is open, so they hypothesise that the Master must have taken the Doctor outside. Martha wonders how as they climb and clamber towards the exit. The Doctor, when she last saw him, was in no state to scramble over this mess.  
  
On that same branch of thought: neither was the Master, in fact, he had been suffering from a bad case of dead, but he seems to have got over that.   
  
Martha thinks of cockroaches.  
  
They reach the door, and there is a temporary disorientation as they pull themselves out onto a different plane of gravity. The TARDIS's blue outer shell is turned on its side in the middle of a field. There is a fence in the distance, and on the other side there is a small compound of dingy white concrete buildings. They look vaguely military, and Martha hopes that they haven't landed in a restricted area —  
  
Being arrested and held down for questioning would be the topper on everything that has happened. She thinks it might push her over the edge.   
  
"Where to?" she asks Jack.  
  
He's looking at the compound with a hand over his eyes to protect them from glare. The sun is up about as high as it can go and it's hot. Behind them the field, studded with occasional trees, goes on and on. Martha knows that there is only one logical direction, but she can't help feeling a bit sad/scared/angry when Jack points (Her emotions are all jumbled inside her. She can't understand what she feels, so she represses it. She knows it's unhealthy, but it's survival, and what else can she do? She thinks that this is how the Doctor ended up the way he is.).  
  
They walk towards the compound. The fence, when they reach it, is easy enough to jump. Barbed wire, but Martha dealt with enough of that over the year to know how to avoid getting cut. Jack seems equally experienced and they proceed.  
  
There are no footprints, no clues. Really they're just wandering around hopefully. There are armed guards up ahead. Martha sees them first, but it is Jack who pulls her around a corner before they can be spotted. She's used to having the perception filter. It's left her handicapped. She might have walked right into those guards if Jack hadn't —  
  
"Thanks," she whispers.  
  
"He isn't outside," says Jack, "If he's anywhere I'd guess for inside one of those buildings, but which one?"  
  
"More to the point," says Martha, "How do we get past the goon squad?"  
  
That seems to stump Jack, but he comes up with a response soon enough, and he manages to grin as he delivers it:  
  
"Simple, we pull a Doctor and let ourselves get captured."  
  
"Because that worked so well the last time," Martha says.  
  
"You got a better plan?"  
  
She doesn't.  
  
A moment later it doesn't matter. There are four of them, in pale green military uniforms, guns raised and pointed. They are humans, and their uniforms aren't quite modern, but they aren't historic either.   
  
"Identification," one of them barks.  
  
Jack stretches out his arms, fists closed.  
  
"You didn't say please," he chides.  
  
One of the guards leans forward.  
  
"Please," he says irritably.  
  
Jack grabs the barrel of his rifle in a lightening move, and swings it around, knocking the guard to the grass, clutching at a nose that will never be straight again. Martha has one of the others in a headlock before they can flinch, but that still leaves two. There's a bang. Loud. Martha can't hear. Spinning. Disoriented.  
  
Jack is lying on the ground with a bullet through his temple.  
  
Martha wants to throw up. She knows he'll just come back, but it's too much. She can't deal with any more death. Not after everything. It was suppose to be over damn it! It was supposed to be over!  
  
She doesn't realise that she is shouting those words out loud. Nor does she see the looks that the guards are giving her, and the raised eyebrows that they are giving to each other. She doesn't see the stunned expression on the too-young face of the guard who pulled the trigger, or hear the bloody-murder shouts of the broken-nosed man Jack conked. Her knees have gone weak, and she lets herself fall onto the grass. Grass is nice.  
  
She can smell its greenness, and the rich earth beneath it — mostly clay with a sprinkle of true soil. Red and strong smelling. Dry, but moist — old rain, old promises, soaked up by the sun. Worms going down to their rest after the turmoil of the flood. Sweet clover, clippings, and the dead, straggling yellow bits underneath. An ant hill.  
  
One of the guards is putting handcuffs on her and she doesn't care. She's all right though, her and the Doctor — they're both fine, always. Jack's fine too. He's coming back to life. Gagging and thrashing on the lawn. He startles the guards, but to their credit they don't shoot him again. Instead they check his head, exchange astonished glances, and cuff him too.  
  
The guards are dragging Jack to his feet. He complies. They try to get Martha up as well, but she doesn't want to leave the grass. Grass is nice. Grass is soft. Grass is simple.  
  
She kicks and screams, but they get her up, eventually (though she manages to bite one of them). They lead them into one of the buildings. Which is okay, because that was what she wanted right? She thinks. She doesn't know. She just wants to lie down on the grass and sleep herself to death.


	3. In Victory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Author's Notes:
> 
> I swear, the Doctor does eventually return to the narrative. I'm going to a wedding on the other side of the country next week, so the current updating status of this is a bit dubious.  
> 

  
  
Blue.  
  
Blue time.  
  
Time on its side. Weak. Easy prey.  
  
People are dancing, worshipping me, as they should.  
  
Pale stars can be seen through the broken siding of this building that they erected to hide me. They dance — shadows against fire and starlight.  
  
Weak, pitiful things. Easily deceived. They are no good prey. I stretch one tentacle forward from my earthy prison to the man who promises my freedom.  
  
He will deliver it, but not the way he thinks.  
  
Fool.  
  
Thinks I will do his bidding. Soon…  
  
  
I pull my tentacle back into the ground.  
  
Soon…  
  
  
  
He will do mine.  
  


*

  
  
  
Jack knows that he's being stupid.  
  
But he is boiling with the need to attack _someone_ to vent his frustration and stress and all of the pain that is simmering in his gut from _being strong_ for so long. And the guard, and the uniform…. Adrenaline is pounding through his veins and he ignores the part of his mind which is shrieking that this might not be a good idea: that this could be anywhere, anytime and trying for conversation before launching into battle mode might get them further in their search for the Doctor.  
  
Martha is looking at him for direction. He is her pillar of strength right now, Jack realizes. She's using him as a crutch to keep sane after everything she's been through.  
  
The guard has a gun in his face.  
  
Jack knows he's being stupid, but what comes next is more instinct than design. The guard is disarmed and disabled in a few swift seconds. Martha watches his actions, and then initiates her own battle dance. Two guards down, two guards to go. Jack can take two men at once. Easy. Except they have guns, and he really has been stupid.  
  
It's a quick death and he doesn't really feel it. Dying is easy; living is easy; it's pulling yourself back together after being fractured for the thousandth time that's hard. Some cracks never fuse back together properly. The Master killed him a lot of times — practice should make things easier rather than harder.  
  
He comes back to the sensation of cold metal locking around his wrists. He wants to fight — oh god in his mind he is rebelling — but a year of chains and telepathic abuse has thumped the idea of docility into him. He can still struggle if he tries, but why bother? It's a waste of resources, and, now that he's truly gone and fucked things up, he thinks that a bit of quiet observation might, possibly, salvage something from the situation. He notices the logo stitched to the guard's shoulders.  
  
Stupid, stupid, stupid… and he hopes that it's not too late to call back his mistake.  
  


*

  
  
  
Martha feels like she's floating on her back underwater. Reality is the silver, tensile skin of the surface; rippling and easily distorted. She can't breathe. She's comfortable in the blood warm pool. She's safe — except she can't breathe, and she's choking on her own delusions. She'll have to surface soon or be lost forever.  
  
That doesn't seem as scary as it should.  
  
An arm breaks the surface, reaches down, pulls her up with a touch. They'll never take her alive. She thrashes and kicks — she's tied down. On a bed, a comfortable bed, but there are restraints on her wrists and ankles.  
  
"She's coming round!" The voice is muffled. A light shines in her eyes. First one then the other. Pupil dilation response test says a far away portion of her mind. She doesn't understand it. She isn't listening. The light is too bright. It hurts. Everything hurts. She jerks her head away.  
  
A face follows the light, swimming into her line of vision like a phantom. She doesn't know this person: male, mid-thirties give or take, funny haircut, predominant chin, blue eyes. He's not modern, he's — Martha's mind can't place a decade he would look ordinary in — not the beginning of the twenty-first. He's wearing a uniform. Uniform means military; means government controlled; means Master controlled.  
  
"Martha? Martha Jones?" the man asks.  
  
That confirms it. He's a stranger but he knows her name; all of the Master's men know her name. There's a bounty out for her arrest.  
  
"Yes," she says. Her tongue is gritty against her cheeks. Why is she so thirsty? They've been torturing her obviously, but she can't remember it. She turns her head sidewise against the bright starched pillow it's resting on.  
  
Why would they give her a pillow?  
  
There's an IV dripping something into her arm, truth serum probably. The room she's in looks like an infirmary, but she knows better; it's a torture recovery chamber for the Master's victims. Well, she won't talk. She won't give away the plan. While there's life there's hope.  
  
She cranes her neck, trying to get a glimpse of her watch. It's gone. Been removed. No way to tell if the moment has gone by or not. She's told a lot of people about the plan. All she can do now is hope that humanity and the Archangel Network will be enough to put things right again.  
  
She wishes she wasn't so thirsty.  
  
As she thinks it a glass of water is pressed to her lips. It's cool, sweet, and unpolluted. Her instinct is to gulp.  
  
"Slowly old girl," says the man, pulling the glass away, "you'll make yourself sick."  
  
The glass returns, and this time Martha rations herself, afraid of losing the water. This wonderful liquid that pours down her chapped throat and settles, cool and marvellous, in her belly. She hasn't had a proper drink in ages. Most of the world's waterways are contaminated now and she ran out of purification tablets weeks ago.  
  
"That's enough," says the man, after half the water is gone, taking the glass away. Martha leans after it, but the restraints keep her from following as the water is placed on a bedside table, so close, but worlds away. She whimpers.  
  
"Everything is fine," the man says soothingly (false sympathy, devious, foul, so like one of the Master's puppets), "we aren't going to hurt you."  
  
"Then why am I restrained?" She manages to put some strength into her voice. She has to make up for her position, for appearing so helpless. God, did she just whimper?  
  
"You've won," she says bitterly, "just kill me and let it be over with."  
  
"It is over," says the man, "You were restrained for your own good. I didn't want it, but the way you were thrashing — and you _bit_ Sergeant Benton. I'll take them off now if you promise not to try and harm anyone, or leave."  
  
"Don't try and trick me," Martha says.  
  
The man's hand pauses. He had been about to undo the bindings, but now he seems to be rethinking it.  
  
"Maybe not. Dreadfully sorry about all this, but you are a bit barmy at the moment. I'd give you a bit of something to help you back to sleep, but I had to give you enough sedatives to knock out a horse when you first came in. Do you know where you are?"  
  
She thinks. She knows where she is: captured by the Master, but her physical location is a mystery. She doesn't remember where she was previous to waking up here. She doesn't remember being captured. She could be hidden in a bunker under the grey ash of burned out Japan, or in some secret room on board the Valiant, or nestled in the claws of one of the great industrial concentration camps that dot and soil the coasts of the Master's world. She doesn't know. Admitting this might be seen as weakness. She keeps her mouth shut.  
  
"You're in a UNIT medical facility. My name is Harry Sullivan and I've been treating you for —"  
  
"You're lying."  
  
The man — this Harry Sullivan — looks concerned and weary, like he has been holding a vigil. Would one of the Master's men look concerned? Or perhaps this is another trick.  
  
She hears a creaking sound, wood on tiled floor, and her eyes swing round to find the source. The room's door is opening. Martha braces herself. Only one person could be coming to visit her here. She thinks that she will be strong, or try to be.  
  
The person who comes through the door is not who she excepts:  
  
"Jack?"  
  
He comes to her side and squeezes her hand reassuringly. He undoes her restraints.  
  
"It's okay hun," he says.  
  
He is clean, and his eyes look less dull.  
  
"These people are friends," he says, and she thinks she might believe him. "It's 1974," he adds.  
  
She surfaces, breaking the beaded surface of her disassociation with a sob. The Master hasn't captured her, because he has been dethroned and his empire overthrown. This is where the TARDIS brought them: not to another planet, but to a past where she hasn't been born. She is Martha Jones and she saved the world, and that chapter of her life is over — except it isn't, because she's trapped here.  
  
"We need to find the Doctor," she croaks.  
  
His hands are tender on her bruised wrist. They sit there, nestled over her pulse, comforting, calming.  
  
"Yes," he says, "but rest first."  
  
She shakes his hand away, ignores the attending doctor's _"steady on there, you're not quite fit"_ , and sits up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. She feels a bit dizzy. She grabs the glass from the bedside table and gulps the remaining liquid inside. She dries her mouth with the back of her hand feeling better.  
  
"There's no time," she says.  
  
And the look in Jack's eyes says that he knows:  
  
There never is.

 


	4. In question

**Chapter 4: In Question**

  
  
She has a shower before going anywhere (complete with delousing shampoo), and gets some new clothes — they're military issue, made for men, too big, and baggy in all the wrong places, but _they're clean_.   
  
Her head has been stitched up. It's a good job. She's jealous of the skills and equipment that provided it; Being a doctor was probably the most difficult part of the year — harder than the rough nights or the constant hiding and fatigue, harder than the thirst, or the knowledge that the fate of the world and the universe balanced on her pitifully unprepared shoulders. She remembers the first time she held a baby that was dying of a cold — that was it, a simple cold, and mild malnutrition — she could have fixed him so easily if she had been a tiny bit more experienced, a fraction more prepared.   
  
Instead she got to watch his lips go blue, and feel his tiny heart flutter, and stop.   
  
Back to the present. If she reflects on the past she might get trapped in it again. Except, technically, she is in the past and the past she can't let herself think about is the future. Except it's not even that because it never happened.   
  
God her head hurts.   
  
"Are you okay?" asks Jack.   
  
"I'm fine," says Martha, "just… thinking."   
  
Jack doesn't ask what about.   
  
They're walking down a hallway (drab military issue like everything else). Going to the Brigadier's office. Whoever he is. The guard Martha bit is walking with them, Sergeant Benton, he was waiting for them when they emerged from the infirmary. His arm has been bandaged, and he accepted Martha's apology with a quaint, ironic smile; like biting people is a normal event and nothing to get excited over.   
  
They are still prisoners, or at least under suspicion.   
  
"I get put in detention," Jack says, explaining, "this little box of a room, not even a real cell, and I'm just sitting there contemplating my navel when this man, well dressed, a bit old, but definitely a looker, barges in asking what I've done with his Bessie."   
  
"His who?" Martha asks.   
  
"His car, apparently," says Jack.   
  
"It's yellow," Benton supplies, as if that means something.   
  
"That's not the point," says Jack, "the point is who the man is."   
  
"The Doctor?" says Benton, before Martha can respond or Jack can continue.   
  
"The who?!"   
  
Martha stops in the middle of the hall. She's running through a mental checklist: well dressed, not after the year, but he could have found new clothing. Old, yes, but only because of the Master. A looker… that is stop, stay away territory… yes.   
  
"Not our Doctor," Jack says before she can get hopeful, " _A_ Doctor, a former Doctor if that makes sense. He's the Doctor, but not ours yet. A previous regeneration."   
  
Martha blinks. Of course it couldn't be that easy. They continue walking down the hall.   
  
"Is he how you —" she pauses, trying to form her turbulent thoughts into coherent sentences. "Did you explain everything to him? Is that how we're wandering around getting to see this Brigadier instead of chained up in some cellar? How you got me medical treatment? Or was that just your charm and good looks?"   
  
"They would have treated you in any case," Jack says, "but I'm a fact in time: he believed everything I said."   
  
"You told him about —" Martha starts, and stops when Jack interrupts with a shake of his head and a definite _don't say anything about that_ look in his eyes.   
  
"I told him we're from his future. Anything more than that could be dangerous. Paradoxes. He agrees with me. This version of the Doctor still has some sense left in his head."   
  
Martha stops again, a realisation sputtering through her abused mind.   
  
"The Doctor owned a yellow car named Bessie?"   
  
It's in character, and she can even picture it: the Doctor in some yellow roadster (it would have to be a roadster, and an open-roofed one at that — he's _such_ a little boy sometimes) his spiky hair thrown back by the breeze, the road bumpy and twisting before him as he rides carelessly at breakneck speed, his attention everywhere but where it should be.   
  
It's enough to make her crack a smile through the tears that she's finished with holding back. Jack too, though she doesn't know what picture he's imaging. Benton is smiling as well, but he's been doing that since Martha met him. He's got the look of a man who is competent, but often lost in daydreams.   
  
He keeps looking at her out of the corner of his eye in the most awkward way. _Dream on_ , Martha thinks. Though he does seem sweet enough. And very forgiving considering that she gnawed on his arm earlier.   
  
They turn a corner.   
  
There's a door with a subdued nameplate reading _Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart_. Benton knocks on it with a respectful, restrained fist, before opening it, and throwing a salute to the man inside.   
  
The Brigadier is a slim man with a small, well-trimmed moustache that looks more glued-on than grown. He's wearing the same pale green uniform as everyone else, and he has a small wooden baton tucked under one arm. He has the pose of a soldier and a brook-no-nonsense leader, an imposing figure and a leader of men, but Martha's eyes quickly skim over him to the other man in the room:   
  
_He_ is tall, and topped with a messy puff of white hair that reminders her of her own Doctor — but there all resemblance ends. This Doctor looks like a six-foot light bulb in a dinner jacket. This Doctor looks confident, in control. He stands straight, and doesn't seem to be carrying as much emotional luggage as her incarnation.   
  
He looks — more free?   
  
He's giving her a critical eye, and those are also different: blue and wise instead of brown and tormented, but the sparkle is exactly the same. It's how she knows who he is immediately. That, and who else would wear that costume in public?   
  
"Martha Jones?" he asks, stepping forward, "glad to see you are doing better."   
  
The Brigadier clears his throat.   
  
The Doctor passes him a look. There is some tension between the men that Martha can't define; friendship, yes, but also an extreme annoyance and disapprovingness. There's water under that bridge.   
  
"I think we'll have to save the introductions," the Doctor says, his eyes twinkling.   
  
"Yes," says the Brigadier dryly, "I am still abundantly curious as to why exactly you are vouching for these intruders who attacked four of my men this morning, especially after the theft of your beloved vehicle?"   
  
"Oh, but look at this woman," says the Doctor, winking at Martha, "she couldn't be a thief? Surely. She's far too beautiful for that."   
  
Martha blushes, Benton starts doing that awkward corner-of-his-eyes thing again, and Jack looks ready to burst out laughing. The Doctor waggles his eyebrows suggestively adding to the mirth.   
  
"Doctor!" the Brigadier snaps.   
  
Martha's own eyebrows twitch at that. She doesn't think she's ever seen anyone try to boss the Doctor (her Doctor) around with that much authority in their voice and a seeming expectation that they will be obeyed. Except the Master. But that isn't what's going on here.   
  
She wonders again at the two men's relationship.   
  
"I have an excellent eye," says the Doctor, rolling onto a new subject with such skill it doesn't seem like the answer to a command. "I can almost always spot a liar, and believe me when I say this pair is innocent… of that one crime at least. Though, I don't believe they are being completely honest about their purpose here, but, I believe they have reasons for that as well."   
  
"I don't have time for their reasons," the Brigadier says, "security has been breached and I am the one who will have to answer for that in Geneva if anything with more importance than your car has gone missing."   
  
"Brigadier," the Doctor says slowly, and suddenly all of the whimsy goes out of his voice leaving something behind that is hard as ice and very alien, "there will be much worse things to deal with if you do not listen to what I have to say right now. You currently have far larger problems to worry about than security breaches. There are some very serious temporal anomalies registering on my scanners. Something is trying to gain entrance to this dimension. Something which doesn't belong here."   
  
Jack coughs, and all of the eyes in the room turn to look at him.   
  
"It isn't you," the Doctor says, "yours is a creative anomaly. This is an utterly destructive one. It will rip the fabric of this world apart if given a chance."   
  
There is a short gap in conversation. The room is still, and all of the previous laughter is gone. In its place is a shuddery electricity. Martha feels cold without reason. All she can think about are paradoxes: the world eating kind.   
  
"Could it be…" she starts, and all eyes are on her now, daring her to speak "…the Doctor," she finishes lamely. "Or…" she tries again, ignoring the frantic _shut up_ gestures Jack is making. Paradoxes can swoop down and eat her foot for all she cares; she didn't save the world for it to get destroyed again. "The Master?"   
  
That brings a reaction. Everyone in the room — excluding her and Jack — repeats the name in a hushed voice. The kind of voice you use when talking about the devil. Down at whisper level so he won't hear you talking and give a response.   
  
"I take it you know him?" says Martha (of course the Doctor knows him, she berates herself. They were childhood friends, she thinks, it's been a long time since she heard the story. A year. And she wasn't sure she believed it then).   
  
The Doctor is looking at her through narrow eyes.   
  
"Yes," he says, and she's not sure if he's answering her question; _yes, I know him_ or _yes, he's the cause of this disturbance_ , or both.   
  
"He kidnapped the Doctor," Jack says.   
  
So much for paradoxes.   
  
"The Doctor?" the Brigadier says, "but he's right h… don't tell me there's more than one of them about." He begins massaging his temples. It's a headache that Martha is well familar with. She sends sympathy by turning her eyes to the carpet. It's brown and lumpy.   
  
The Doctor takes a deep breath, and when he releases it he seems to deflate a little. He isn't as strong as Martha thought when she first came into the room (she's looking for strength everywhere lately, probably because she has so little left herself). He's not broken like her Doctor. He doesn't have a great crushing weight of grief bearing down on him or an air of barely contained madness, but, hidden at the back of his blue-not-brown gaze is a flicker of sadness, and, maybe, fear. But she could be imagining that. Because she needs him, _someone_ , to be strong for her, lest she drown again.   
  
"This may be more serious than I first suspected," he says in a gravelly voice, "I think you should tell me everything."   
  
So they do.


	5. In flux

Ahh, an update at last. Sorry about the months of waiting. RL is intervening in a powerful way. Many thanks to BewaretheSpork for the most excellent beta job.

Chapter 5: In Flux

_"Come, come to me. Give me your strength mighty tree of life. Make me a ruler of worlds."_

 

_"Call, call to me. Fool. Give me my freedom idiot lord of time. Make me a god of destruction once more…"_

 

 

* 

 

Night.

An antique, yellow roadster rolls down a country road. whipping up miniature tornados of dust in its wake. The car is anachronistic, whimsical, and going far over the speed limit. The man at the wheel has a slight paunch to his jowls, bugging blue eyes, and a stringy beard. He is not attractive. He isn’t steering very well either, and the casual observer would think him drunk. He isn’t familiar with this vehicle, and it’s one of those cars that seems to rebel when driven by anyone but its natural owner.

The passenger seat is occupied by a tiny bundle of flesh, curled up and making harsh noises that might be its way of breathing, or crying — it’s hard to tell. It doesn’t appear to be awake. It’s naked and grotesque, and it is conscious despite appearances. It is aware of being in pain, and of moving very quickly, but beyond that is a great haze of confusion.

The driver twists the wheel and punches his foot onto the brakes. The cars growls and swerves into a rutted dirt driveway before puttering to a stop. The driver hops out. He sways on his feet, adding to the illusion of intoxication. He wobbles around to the other side of the car but doesn’t bother to open the door. He simply bends over it and scoops up the tiny passenger. With the little creature cradled in his arms like an unholy child, the driver starts walking. The yellow car is still idling behind him, one door ajar, but he doesn’t intend to return.

There’s nothing around for miles except harried moor land and ragged-looking farms, but not much of anything can be seen in the dark. There is the far off cry of some small animal being killed by a bird of prey, and the smell of charred wood; both of which hang too sharply and too long in the air before being wiped away by the breeze. The winding driveway turns toward a barn-like structure. It lists badly to one side and its walls are gap-slated. A red veil of fire and shadow dances behind the holes.

People are laughing; people are chanting; people are screaming; but all of it is strangely muted, and, high above, a bank of clouds rolls over the moon.

The gnarled creature in the driver’s arms struggles — weakly. The driver only tightens his grip and continues down his path to the barn. His eyes glow in the disappearing moonlight. His steps are surer.

His is the walk of a man who knows that he has won.

 

 

 

* 

Jack and Martha tell the Doctor the story of the year that wasn’t, of the Valiant, and the Master, and the Paradox Machine. Martha does most of the actual telling — she told the story so many times over the lost year that it’s almost second nature. She could tell it in her sleep (she knows that for a fact because more than once she woke up to the sound of voices during the year only to realise it was herself frantically telling the tale in her dreams). She keeps her eyes firmly on Jack throughout the narrative and skips and edits liberally whenever he shakes his head. Occasionally, Jack butts in with a completely reorganized version of events.

“That’s the whole story then?” asks the Doctor when they’ve finished. He’s taken a seat in the Brigadier’s chair; much to the man’s annoyance and disapproving frown. The Brigadier is standing soldier straight by his desk, and Benton must have slipped out at some point. Martha didn’t see him go, but she is slightly relieved. Something about the man made her stomach flop; nothing unpleasant, but…

“Near enough,” Martha says to the Doctor, knowing that a person would have to be totally blind to have missed the frantic signalling between her and Jack.

“It seems to me,” says the Brigadier, “that this paradox year or whatever it is could be the thing setting off your equipment, Doctor.”

The Doctor scratches his chin. “No… I’m not certain it is. A paradox would send out a ripple, but it would be highly localized to a specific time zone. What I’m picking up is far broader, and seems to be pushing through from a different dimensional existence. Possibly a pocket universe of some sort… However, it is too much of coincidence to say that the two events are not related. All events have repercussions, and who knows what monsters the ripples might have roused out of the depths of the temporal pond?”

“Though I’m sure you have several doom and gloom theories,” the Brigadier says, deadpan.

“Nothing pleasant,” the Doctor affirms.

Martha coughs to get the Doctor’s attention, and he looks at her with a very familiar expression, the one that his future self always gave to the casualties before saying “I’m sorry”.

“You’re not going to help us, are you?” she asks.

“Miss Jones,” says the Brigadier, “it is UNIT’s duty to investigate any situation involving the Master.”

“What she means,” says Jack, pointing a thumb towards the Doctor, “is will _he_ help us. And I don’t think he’s going to. Are you, Doc?”

“No,” says the Doctor, meeting Jack’s eyes with a pair of clear blues that are steady and sorry and set in their decision. “From what you have told me it would be cosmically irresponsible of me to attempt to cross my own time line. Things are muddled enough as it is without adding more paradoxes into the mix. It might be just the thing this anomaly I’m sensing needs to cross the dimensional threshold into our universe, and I won’t allow that.”

The Doctor crosses his arms, as if that will make a barrier to protect the universe from the bogey-man.

Jack takes a sharp breath, but nods. It’s a sturdy gesture of concession, and Martha feels part of her heart slipping away with it. Martha knows that Jack understands more about time streams and paradoxes than she does, and she knows that the Doctor probably knows more on the subject than anyone alive (at least her Doctor did). If the pair of them agree that doing something could, potentially, blow a crater into space that stretches from England to Jupiter, than she has no doubt that, probably, that isn’t the best course of action to follow. Still, she feels betrayed.

“So you’re just leaving him — you— helpless while me and Jack are stuck here in the seventies,” said Martha, “And what are we supposed to do here, sit about and twiddle our thumbs? Should I go out and get a job at the shop again?”

“Martha,” Jack says. It’s a touch warning, telling her not to fall off the deep end again. Reluctantly she takes it and backs off. She’s panting and feels a bit dizzy. Her head aches where she hit it. She starts to lean a bit too heavily to one side, overbalances, and is caught by a pair of strong, thin arms. She looks up into the even, moustached face of the Brigadier.

The Doctor vacates his seat and Martha is led over to the chair. After sitting she feels almost immediately better. Exhaustion, says the medical student part of her brain, malnutrition… she pushed her body too hard over the year and now it’s refusing to deal with anything else. That UNIT doctor, Harry, did warn her she wasn’t ready to be up and about. Her body wants a rest. Martha wants a rest too, but she’s not naïve enough to think she’ll be getting one any time soon. Because, until she gets the Doctor (her Doctor) back, safe and sound, she refuses to stop pushing herself.

As a medical student she knows that this is a stupid course of action, but she stopped listening to the logical part of her mind a long time ago.

“My TARDIS is working now,” says the Doctor, soft, kind, and not condescending at all. “And if you would like, I could attempt to bring you back to your proper era. I shouldn’t be spending large amounts of time with future acquaintances, but given the circumstances I think that having you continue on out of time would be far more dangerous.”

“And leave the Doctor behind?” asks Martha. “Never.”

“I’m with her on that,” says Jack. “We aren’t leaving unless we leave together. You can’t cross your own timestream, got that, but what’s stopping you from rustling up some tracking gadget — Spock, Rose called it…” Jack pulls up in mid-sentence, his voice hitching before returning to a different point; “You wouldn’t have to have any real contact with you that way.”

The Doctor appears to consider this for a moment.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally, “but it is absolutely out of the question.”

“What? You can zap us back to the future but you can’t make a tracking thingy-ma-bob?” says Martha, and if she sounds hysterical then, well, she feels hysterical.

“Now, Doctor,” says the Brigadier calmly, reasonably. He shifts that little stick thing he’s carrying from underneath one arm to the other. There’s a pause laden with potential, and it seems like the Brigadier is about to go off on a lecture (and Martha is secretly a bit in awe of this man who talks back to the Doctor with every seeming expectation of being obeyed, or, at the least, acknowledged).

“No, don’t start,” says the Doctor, holding up one hand, “I’ve made a decision. There’s too much going on here already. This is a powder keg and the smallest bit of tweaking by me could blow us all back into the Pleistocene. In any case, all of these disturbances are bound to attract the attention of the Time Lords, who will no doubt want me to write them a pretty little report on exactly what’s going on before blaming the whole mess on me. Though, strictly speaking, I suppose it is my fault.”

Jack flinches visibly at the mention of the Time Lords. Martha feels like swooning again but forces herself to stay upright. She’s known all along that this Doctor isn’t the last lonely member of his race, that he isn’t carrying around the giant load of I-pushed-the-button survivor’s grief that her Doctor does, but hearing him actually talk about his people as a living race is shocking. So is the bitterness in his tone. And she wonders, for the zillionth time, what his planet was (is?) actually like. When he described it to her on New Earth it sounded so beautiful, almost like heaven, but he never mentioned the people living there. Never named any names. If they were all as bastardly as the Master she understands why.

Then her brain turns another gear and she thinks what would happen if the Time Lords came here, now, and she feels like she’s about to explode. She doesn’t understand paradoxes or quantum math or anything. She’s a doctor — almost — and she knows her sciences better than most people, but when it comes to the cosmos she’s baffled. It’s just too big, and so are the consequences.

She knows why Jack flinched. She’s wincing too, because she’s just seen the end of the universe in a giant paradox, black hole, anomaly thingy. And it was all supposed to be over, damn it!

“They can’t,” she squeaks.

The Doctor stares at her. His eyes eating into her soul, asking why.

“No Time Lords,” says Jack, backing her up in clipped syllables that refuse to give away more than the bare basics.

“I can hardly keep them away,” says the Doctor, “an anomaly this size is a threat to their cosy lives. Oh, they don’t care if a planet this size gets destroyed, but this has the potential to spread if it gets loose.”

“Then we can’t let it get loose,” says Martha, “Please, build the tracker thingy for Jack and we’ll deal with this. I don’t care what you think the risks are, but it won’t be half as bad as if your people show up.”

“She’s right Doc,” says Jack, “I can’t tell you why but —”

“I’ll build it then,” the Doctor cuts him off, his gaze drifting towards the room’s single window and the bland view it frames, “but I won’t be happy about it, and I certainly expect you not to breathe one word more to me about my future activities. Too much has been said already. Ah, Mr. Benton…”

The Sergeant opens the door as the Doctor speaks. He carries two cups of what, by the steam and smell, can only be tea.

“I thought the young lady looked a bit faint and thought that a cup of tea might do her good, and then it wasn't much work to make a second for whoever would like it,” he says.

Martha makes a half-hearted effort to cover her face.

“Good man,” says the Brigadier, requisitioning one of the cups and handing it to Martha. She drinks, reluctantly, but the warmth brings strength and a sappy kind of peace. No one makes a move for the second cup and Benton is left holding it. He looks bemused for a moment before bringing it to his mouth and taking a sip. Martha catches the way Jake is eying the Sergeant and barely suppresses a smile. Here they are, sitting about discussing the end of the universe, drinking tea, and Jack is thinking about flirting.

“Right,” says the Doctor before Jack can make any moves, “I’m going to my TARDIS to work on this ‘tracker thingy’ of yours. While I’m working I expect not to be disturbed, and,” he gives a special mock-glare to Martha, “I expect you to get some rest. Whatever mad-cap rescue scheme you have planned I have a suspicion that you will need to stay up right in order to perform it.”

tbc

 


	6. In waiting you learn

Author's Notes:

Sorry about the long wait, things got hectic, life interfered, etc. ect. etc.

Thank you to Bewarethespork for all of your help.

This chapter was originally A LOT longer, and it ended on a truly wicked (at least I think so) cliff-hanger, however come Saturday I'm going to be in the middle of a rain forest doing archaeologist type stuff, and consequently I won't be able to up-date any thing for five weeks. I thought it would be mean to leave you all hanging for that long, thus you get the softer version. Hopefully you enjoy it even though not much happens (the next chapter, when it gets posted, will be extra-double long and action packed to make up).

Finally, thank you to Ciaviel for the nudge.  


  
****

Chapter 6: In waiting we learn

Martha dozes in the sickbay. She shares small, crust-cut sandwiches with Sergeant Benton, who doesn’t eat or say much but makes quite a few dopey expressions. Afterwards, she has nothing much to do. She dozes some more, drinks three cups of tea, plays cards with a few soldiers who are on break, and, finally, gets fed up with inaction and marches off to see what Jack is up to and how the Doctor is coming with the tracker.

The Doctor’s lab is a mess: test-tubes, scrap-metal, books, silk jackets thrown haphazardly over chairs, plates of food growing fungus colonies. Martha smiles. It needs a woman’s touch, she thinks, or maybe just a maid’s touch. The TARDIS is tucked into a back corner, and Martha is surprised by the amount of junk piled in front of the ship’s door. She remembers the Doctor saying that he was going to his ship to work on the tracker, but it looks like he hasn’t entered the old girl in some time.

The Doctor is alone. He stands by a cluttered table tinkering with what appears to be a wine bottle, a mousetrap, and a walkie-talkie. Martha wonders where Jack is since she hasn’t seen him around and assumed he’d come here to help or annoy. The Doctor hasn’t noticed her, and she watches him from the doorway for a few minutes. His face is pulled tight with concentration, and there is a certain deliberate tension to his movements. It’s like he holding something back; he is a jack-in-the-box ready to spring, but Martha can’t tell if the puppet in the box will be a funny clown or a scary clown.

His back is turned to his ship, and, for some reason, that is significant. Perhaps it is the light, or the paint is a greyer tone of blue, but to Martha the TARDIS looks sad. She feels like she is intruding, standing in the doorway like this, watching. She clears her throat to get the Doctor’s attention.

The change that comes over him is fascinating, and a bit frightening to watch. The tension falls out of him and some kind of fake smile pours in to take its place. It’s a clown mask, but not the hidden one. He doesn’t look up to greet Martha.

“I sent him looking for a wave-length deliberator and a ball of yarn,” he says, answering Martha’s unspoken question about Jack, “He kept breathing down my neck and asking questions best left unanswered, and there’s something about him…” the Doctor trails off. He stretches hugely and finally looks over at Martha. “He was impeding my concentration,” he finishes, “and I did warn him, though…” he scratches his chin, “…I suppose it wasn’t his fault.”

“Are you nearly done?” Martha asks. She edges into the room and to the Doctor’s side.

He grabs a sandwich off the cluttered table and takes a few thoughtful bites.

“I’ll be done by morning,” he says, “if I am not interrupted and everything goes well.”

“Oh,” says Martha. The words are soft but the ‘go away’ is clear. She takes a few steps to the door, but is stopped by the Doctor’s big, callused hand on her arm.

“You don’t need to go Martha,” he says, “the company would be nice for a time. As long as you are quiet when you need to be.”

“I can be quiet,” Martha says. After a year of running and hiding she knows silence better than a Christmas-story mouse.

“Good," says the Doctor, "Now, would you hand me that test tube from over there. The blue one?”

Martha searches and finds it. When she gives it to the Doctor he grabs it without looking, though he does rumble a thank-you. It’s taken him only a moment to become immersed in his work again and Martha isn’t sure whether she should be grateful or infuriated.

Grateful she decides, and she hands him a few more tools before he stops making requests and becomes almost automatonic in his movements. There’s an almost physical bond between him and his work, a concentration so intense Martha can feel it. She quietly — though she doubts a stampede of elephants could disturb him — clears herself a chair to sit on. Minutes, maybe hours, pass, and she is fascinated by the weave and duck of his hands and the complex maze of circuitry, lights, and chemicals he builds out of such clumsy tools.

“Dr. Shaw used to say that I only took on assistants to pass me test tubes and tell me how brilliant I am,” he says suddenly, causing Martha to jerk out of the near trace she's fallen into.

He’s still completely engaged in his work. His hands still shuffle multifaceted components across the table top. His voice is distant and far-away and rambling with many long pauses between words, and Martha doesn’t know if she is expected to answer. She doesn’t know if he knows that he is speaking. She notes away the knowledge that she is not the first doctor he's travelled with. For some reason this doesn't overly surprise her.

“It’s generally not this messy in here,” he says. “I’ve been growing slack, letting the outside reflect the inside. Before Liz would tidy up — not a thing out of place with her. She’d pitch a fit whenever I left a dish on the table, and Jo… well, I’m not sure was a tidy person at home, but she had a strong sense of professionalism, sometimes, and seemed to think it was her job to clean up my messes, and in return I’d only leave her larger ones. Eventually they both got fed-up and left, found better places to be, and left me alone with the cleaning up."

"Do you miss them?" Martha asks, already knowing the answer.

"Sometimes, more than I let on, but they moved on with their lives and I'm happy for them. I suppose I should do the same. Your world is beautiful, but it itches and grates with its primitiveness and monotony, and the soldier mentality of this place in particular is infuriating. There’s nothing holding me here now; only this strange notion that something, or someone, is waiting for me, and so I in turn must wait for them. Time Lords get these ideas sometimes — it’s part of being part of the web — only, I wonder if this feeling is nothing but a backlash from being cut out of that web for so long. I wonder if, perhaps, I am waiting in vain. If the real truth is that I can’t bring myself to leave because I’m afraid.”

There’s a long pause, and Martha wonders if that’s the end of his confession. The Doctor starts to sing softly and Martha is struck by how beautiful his voice is; gruff and harmonious. She doesn’t understand the words but doesn’t need to. The song ends, stays ended, but after many moments of quiet he begins speaking again, startling her with how distant he sounds, disconnected from himself.

“I’ve recently betrayed the two most important women in the my life you see. The problem is that one of them went away for a time, and then when I got her back I was so eager to spend time with her that I forget about the one who had nurtured me through her absence. A wise old hermit once counselled me that a man may not serve two masters, and my predicament is that — in doing so — I have ended up losing one friend and despising the other.” He inhales deeply, and swallows so that it echoes around the room. He looks sad, lost, but only for a moment. He smiles ruefully and shakes his head.

“Enough on sad by-gones, this tracker is a tricksy little bauble and it would be rather moronic of me to muck it up by being emotional.”

He stops talking then and is silent for the rest of the night, his hands deftly constructing the tracker as Martha looks on. Eventually she becomes tired. Her eyelids droop, hover, close. And he is still working when she sleeps, but he does stop for a short time to fetch her a blanket and to gently carry her to the dusty cot he keeps hidden behind a lab bench at the room’s far end.

“Sleep,” he says, stroking her cheek, and then returns to his work, less animated now that there is no one to watch.  



	7. In losing you gain and in gaining you lose

Author's Notes:

I have returned from the jungle and offer to you this chapter, originally the end of chapter 6. I was a bit blue at splitting it up because it seems that every chapter is ending with Martha falling unconscious (well, this one doesn't but most of the previous ones...). Anyway, this one contains the mean cliffie that I didn't want to leave you all hanging on. Well... maybe not that mean, but anyway...

I think I'm babbling. I'll just stop and let you read now okay?

  
****

Chapter 7: In Losing you Gain and in Gaining you Lose

_Martha has made her camp under a bridge in a nearly dried up streambed. Nearly, meaning that the foot of her sleeping roll is damp with mud, and all of the mosquitoes and other bugs attracted to the moisture are buzzing and biting at her other end. She adds another reason to the long list of reasons to hate Toclafane: they killed off the bats, birds, and lizards which kept the insect population in check._

There’s grass scratching her cheek, and that’s the reason she’s camped here despite the discomfort; it is well hidden. The bridge above and the thick vegetation flocking to one of the area’s last water sources provides good cover from random patrols of soldiers and packs of feral dogs. She knows that the dogs can smell her out, and are probably as attracted to the water as the bugs are, and she knows that, with the perception filter, she could sleep out in the middle of the road and the Master’s men probably wouldn’t notice until they tripped over her. Still, she feels safer covered on all sides.

Every now and again the perception filter fails and the soldiers do notice her. She doesn’t know if this is because the filter is wearing out from use or if there is some other reason. Once, the filter ran out, and while she was fleeing the guards a bomb dropped on the factory she’d been telling her story to moments before. She doesn’t know if this is coincidence or not. 

She can’t sleep. She hears the crackling of fire and knows it is all in her head. This wasteland is cold, but she feels searing heat. Smoke invades her lungs, choking, devastation. There is shrapnel in her back, and blood on her hands, and oh god, oh god, she’s going to die, and she’s not going to tell the Doctor’s story, and the whole world is going to die with her. She can hear whistling and buzzing coming and now she isn’t sure if it’s her nightmare or reality. The bloody Toclafane are always disturbing her sleep with their noise. That thin whistle that seems to get into her bones and make them ache. It’s as if they know where she is, and even if they can’t find her, can’t see her, can’t kill her, they can always find ways to torment her. 

She remembers the day she met the Doctor and the way she begged to go with him. To travel, to learn, gain new experiences. Well, this is an experience and a half. She should have slapped him and walked away, except, had she done that, who would there be to save the world? But if she hadn’t been with him, if she hadn’t urged Professor Yana to open his watch… paradoxes hurt her head. It was all supposed to be over. The Master is laughing at her. Her parents and Tish are crying. Her brother — last she heard he is dead. The worms are feasting. Dogs are barking. The mosquitoes are miniature Toclafane whistling and buzzing and tearing her apart. 

The fire — she knows it’s only in her head, she knows, or at least tries to delude herself. She wants to sleep, she’s so tired, but the fire is louder now, brighter, hot against her face… It’s coming through the wan grass, lighting it and eating it, destroying her cover, and then, destroying her. 

And somewhere the Master is laughing, and somewhere she is crying, and then a dripping tentacle rimmed with teeth explodes out of the earth and flame to swallow her whole.  
  
  


*

Martha blinks. 

She’s in the Doctor’s lab lying on a not too uncomfortable cot, and the Doctor is nowhere to be seen. Sun, peeking through the blinds of a grimy window, is warm and uncomfortably bright against her cheek. A folded red t-shirt, a short denim jacket, and a pair of jeans rest on a nearby chair along with a proper set of female under garments. Martha puts them on gratefully, wondering at how they fit so perfectly and deciding she probably doesn’t want to know. There is a small gold locket nestled in the t-shirt and she fastens it around her neck. The weight feels good against the crock of her collar bone, familiar and safe, and it is nice to have a touch of frivolousness. It makes her feel light and child-like. 

She wanders out of the lab, noting that the table where the Doctor tinkered last night has been cleared and the tracker is gone. The hall is deserted, but Martha follows the low sound of chatter to the Brigadier’s office. There she finds the Brigadier, Sergeant Benton, Captain Jack, and the Doctor. They stop talking amongst themselves as she comes in. 

“Good morning to you sweet heart,” says Jack. 

Martha mock glares at him, but says nothing. 

“Yes, good afternoon Ms. Jones,” says the Brigadier. He frowns slightly, “We’ve been waiting for you.” 

On the other side of the office’s window the sun is plainly tip-toeing its way towards noon, and Martha suppresses a flush of embarrassment at her sluggishness. It’s not her fault though, is it? She’s mildly annoyed at Jack for looking so chipper. At everyone. At the way Benton keeps looking at her — she bit him ,damn it, that shouldn’t be a turn on, and she refuses to reciprocate for a man who is technically old enough to be her father, maybe grandfather. 

“They wanted to start without you,” says Jack, “but I convinced them that you would be a raging tornado if you woke to find yourself abandoned.” 

“Quite,” says the Brigadier. 

“Is it ready then?” Martha asks, and in reply the Doctor pulls something out of his pocket that looks like a wine bottle except for the web of wires and tiny flashing lights visible through the lightly frosted glass. He places the bottle-shaped tracker in Martha’s hand wrapping his fingers around hers. 

“When it faces the direction of the anomaly,” he says, guiding her hands and the bottle’s spout, “It will vibrate slightly and glow brighter. Green for hot and red for cold, stop and go; I did attempt to make it as fool proof as possible.” 

The lights inside the bottle flicker dimly green when its spout it pointed to the window, and Martha can feel a tingling coming through the glass to sparkle against her fingers. 

“Why are you showing me?” she asks. 

“I interfere with the signal,” says Jack. 

“And I’m driving,” says Benton, holding up a ring of keys, “I’ve been ordered to accompany you, and rules say that only UNIT personnel may drive service vehicles.” 

“Which leaves me,” says Martha as the Doctor withdraws his hands. She cradles the tracker. “Weight of the world in my lap again.” 

Though she thinks that any other UNIT soldier could do this job. It doesn’t have to be her. Hold and point isn’t exactly difficult. She doesn’t want to be involved no matter how easy it is — she only wants to go home — but, at the same time, Jack is right; she would have been mad as hell if they’d left her out. 

“I couldn’t think of a more capable person,” says the Doctor. “I look forward to meeting you Martha Jones.” 

“We won’t be seeing each other again?” Martha asks. 

The Doctor scratches his chin. “It would be a paradox if we didn’t, but hopefully it won’t be for a very long time.” 

It’s then that Martha realises that yes, this probably is a goodbye, because if they are successful and do find the Doctor (her Doctor) then they’ll probably beat a hasty retreat sans farewells as per usual. And, if things don’t go well — well, then it will still probably be a goodbye. 

She thinks she’ll miss this Doctor even though she’s known him for barely any time. She’ll miss his low, soothing voice, his sad blue eyes — so familiar and so distant. 

Martha suddenly puts the tracker down on the Brigadier’s desk and hugs the Doctor. “Thank you,” she says. 

“There, there now.” He pats her back. “Everything will be alright.” 

She smiles, trying to be strong, pretending that those little beads glistening at the corners of her eyes aren’t truly tears. It’s not a sappy moment, or a happy one, but it’s one of those transitional seconds where you know you don’t need to be afraid of what comes next because you know that you’ve got people you can trust, and people you can love, or at least care about, standing behind you. The room is hushed, a moment of silence in memory of what is still to come. Then the tracker goes off, beeping, and flashing, and vibrating to the point where it jiggles itself off the desk. 

Jack dives forward and catches the precious piece of machinery before it can smash on the hard tile floor. 

“What the Dicken’s is going on?” asks the Brigadier over the tracker’s alarm. 

“A large scale temporal anomaly,” says the Doctor. He sways on his feet. Sweat beads above his brow. His voice is calm and level, but Martha can feel him leaning against her, trying to keep his balance against the tug of some invisible current. 

The steady beeping coming off the tracker gets louder, becomes a throb that matches Martha’s heart beat thump for thud. The flashes of green and red coming off the device make an epileptic strobe against the office’s wall. 

“It’s getting stronger,” the Doctor says. Jack raises a hand in front of his face, as if fending something off. In his other hand he clutches the tracker in a crushing fist. A crack spreads across the side of the bottle. 

There’s a loud thud from the hallway and the door bangs open, revealing an out-of-breath enlisted man. 

“It’s vanished!” the soldier puffs out. 

“What’s vanished?” the Brigadier shouts, “and can someone deal with that damned noise?” 

The tracker’s shrieks are dying down, but they still preclude any kind of thinking. 

The Doctor, looking none too steady, takes the tracker from Jack and strokes it soothingly, like he’s petting a small animal. The alarm gradually quiets, the bottle stops flashing and shaking. 

“The box,” says the soldier in the new, eerie silence, “the blue box, I was on duty to guard it, and then I leaned against it to tie my boot, and it vanished.” 

“Are you sure?” asks Jack. He’s lowered his hand, but he looks grey now that the light’s returned to normal. So does the Doctor. 

“Sure?” says the soldier, “I fell on my rear!” He turns, revealing a somewhat muddy backside. “It vanished into thin air. It was there, there was this noise like a generator kicking up, and then it was gone. I’m not crazy.” 

“No,” says the Doctor, “You aren’t.” 

“Though you do seem to have a remarkable talent for not picking up on Messhall gossip,” says the Brigadier, "and for showing improper manners to your superiors." 

"Apologies sir." The soldier suddenly looks slightly faint. He snaps to a speedy attention. 

"What is your name?" the Brigadier asks. 

"Private Crieghton Sir." 

"How long have you been with UNIT Private Crieghton?" 

"Three weeks this monday Sir." 

The Brigadier nods curtly. "I see. Dismissed. But in the future knock, and try not to be alarmed when things disappear. It's all too common an occurance around here for you to be running a fit each time it happens."

The young private's eyes widen, but he says nothing. He gives the Brigadier a stiff salute and then leaves very quickly.

“What are we going to do?” asks Martha once he's gone, feeling the edges of panic as what the soldier has said sinks in. The TARDIS is gone. Did the Master steal it? Did the paradox somehow destroy it? Or worse, did the Doctor find his way back, and then, in his daze, abandon them? 

“Exactly what we were going to do before,” says the Doctor, “you and Benton and Jack are going to go for a little drive and save the world, except,” he pauses, “except now I’m coming with you.” 

“But what about paradoxes?” asks Martha, remembering the long speeches about why he couldn’t help out. She thinks of the planet being tossed inside out by powers almost beyond her comprehension. She thinks of the stars going out one by one. 

“That disturbance rated an eight on the Chronornian scale,” the Doctor says, “At six the fabrics of reality start to unwind, at eight they grow increasingly unstable, at nine the effects become noticeable to non-time sensitives, and at ten —” 

“At ten we all fall down Alice’s rabbit hole for a bit before getting turned inside out and sucked into a black hole,” says Jack, “right Doctor?” 

“Yes.” 

“But didn’t you say you increased the risk of —” Martha starts, but doesn’t finish, Jack waves her off and cuts in; 

“What the Doctor was saying just now is that, at this point, it doesn’t really matter. These kind of holes are progressive and this one is growing way faster than is good for anyone’s health. It’s going to make a big bang whether or not he tap-dances on his time line, so he might as well come along and lend his expertise. Am I right?” 

“I couldn’t have put it better,” says the Doctor. 

“Then what are we waiting for?” asks Jack, “let’s go!” 

tbc


	8. In Search

Author's Notes:

many thanks to Bewarethespork for the Britpick

  
****

Chapter 7: In Search

 

She doesn’t deserve this, Jack thinks.

They’re sailing along in the UNIT jeep; Benton, at the wheel, is making occasional light-hearted comments to try and bring down the mood. It isn’t working, but Jack respects the attempt. The Doctor is silent, brooding. He keeps fiddling with his fingers, stroking his chin, checking his pockets… Underneath his aristocratic crust, with the manners and the frills, he’s just as fidgety as the other Doctor, Jack thinks. Not Jack’s Doctor with the toothy, fantastic grin and the smell of cinnamon and leather — that man is dead — but the other-other Doctor, the skinny Doctor in brown pinstripes, the Doctor they’re looking for. But then, they’re all the same man, right?

Except Jack doesn’t understand regeneration, and the man he spent the last year with is not the man he tried to con during the London Blitz, not the man who saved his life, not the man who abandoned him; and the Doctor sitting beside him right now is neither. He’s someone else, someone distinct, someone who’s going to play the part and hopefully save the world.

The jeep has one large bench seat in the front. Benton is on the right doing the steering. The Doctor is by the window on the left, Jack is shoved between them, and Martha is on the far right, practically on Benton’s lap, leaning out the window with the tracker, shouting directions —

She doesn’t deserve this, Jack thinks again.

If he thinks about it hard enough, he doesn’t deserve this either, but he’s had a good century — not to mention the last year — to play pity party, and besides, he’s used to these sorts of situations. He’s been trained for it, and maybe it’s karma on him for all the crap he’s pulled in his time. He isn’t any saint.

He’s not naïve, though. He knows that TARDIS travel is better hands-on training than anything the agency ever gave him, and he knows that whatever he experienced on the Valliant, it was probably cushy compared to what Martha went through down below. He has so much respect for this woman, and the way that she’s holding herself together right now, leaning out that window, shouting Red! Green! Turn left here!

She didn’t sign up for this life. That’s the difference. Jack chose to join the Time Agency — granted, he only did so to dodge a draft — but there were other options he could have taken. He could have enrolled in an off-world university, faked an injury, or simply run away. He _chose_. And then he chose to become a con-artist, a soldier, a defender of Earth. He didn’t choose to become immortal, but he did choose to live recklessly back when he had only one life to spare.

He watches Martha. He watches the way the wind tugs at her hair, and the stern set to her jaw. He watches the way light and shadow jostle over her face as Benton drives — not too fast, but still stretching the speed limits.

Jack learned about Martha over the year that never was. He doesn’t know her very well. They only met for that little while on Utopia before everything went to hell, and that was all chaos and rushed accusations. He feels like he knows her better than that though, because over the year a picture emerged. He’d talk with her parents sometimes, with her sister quite a bit, and even, rarely, he’d get a word with the Doctor.

Jack knows Martha through a mosaic of anecdotes, from how she gave up her last breath of air to save the Doctor on the moon —

(“Though it was stupid of her,” the Doctor had said in an old-man whisper as they stole a moment of peace while the Master’s back was turned. “I can go without oxygen for longer than any human, and I was waiting for my cells to replenish. Still, thought that counts.”)

— To how she used to have nightmares about monsters hiding under her bed when she was little.

(“She always made me check before turning off the lights,” Francine said, blinking despite her dry eyes.

“My little girl,” Clyde said huskily. And then they were silent for a long time, all of them thinking — but resolutely not mentioning — the darkness and the monsters Martha was fighting down below. )

Jack knows from Tish how, when she was nine, Martha scrimped and saved for five months to buy her sister a limited edition Barbie doll for Christmas — one that had the right colour of skin. How she had decided she was going to be a doctor at thirteen, completely out of the blue, and then worked her tail off to get there. How she was determined, and caring, and never gave up, and was completely brilliant. He knows how she’d always wanted to travel. How she read sappy romances when she thought no one was looking. How she liked to dare the odds, ignore statistics, and then surprise the nay-sayers when she came out on top.

He knows how she played good-natured practical jokes on her siblings. How she lied when she she was six and accidently broke her grandmother's favourite vase. How she refused to cry when she was seven and crashed her bike off the curb into a dustbin. How she was a pillar of strength during a messy divorce; how she voiced her anger only to Tish during secret late night phone calls.

Jack watches the thin, battle-worn Martha sitting across from him and mourns her innocence. He mourns the Martha Jones he will never know. He is in awe of the Martha he’s just beginning to meet.

Jack is pulled out of his reminiscences when the jeep slows and pulls off to the side of the road. They all pile out onto the grass. There’s a dirt road here that turns off the main track, but they can’t follow it in the jeep because an abandoned car is blocking the way. It’s a yellow, antique roadster, doors ajar, engine sluggishly idling. Jack’s hand itches to his side, but he isn’t carrying a gun. Something about this is wrong.

The Doctor moves forwards and starts fawning over the car, showing it the same affection Jack remembers _his_ Doctor bestowing on the TARDIS. He wonders if the car is somehow alive as well. Anything is possible.

“Hey there, old girl, what have they been doing to you?” the Doctor says, patting the hood. He moves into the driver’s seat and turns off the ignition.

“We’re close,” says Martha, checking the tracker.

“Yes,” the Doctor agrees.

“I don’t like it,” says Benton, echoing Jack’s thoughts. “It’s like something’s watching us, like static in the air.”

“Level nine,” the Doctor mutters, and Jack can see the tension is his face. The wince that the Doctor is working to contain. The way his steps don’t quite fall even when he walks.

Martha is walking up the road. It’s deeply rutted with grass in the middle. There are puddles at the bottom of the dips, and footprints in the sludge. Lots of footprints. Jack feels the hair on the nape of his neck go up. He tastes dying in the air. It’s a distinct scent, like lightning mixed with dry ice. Martha is holding the tracker. She isn’t looking up; she’s following the trail.

She’s —

His vision is spotting. He can’t see Martha now. He can’t see his hand in front of his face. But he can see the sky, and it’s dark and starry, which is wrong, wrong, wrong because right now it’s just passing one o’clock and the sun should be out — was out — _is_ out.

The stars are spinning. They’re going to swallow him up.

“Level ten,” Jack whispers before falling up the rabbit hole and into the night.  



	9. In Darkness

Author's Notes:

thanks to Bewarethespork

****

Chapter 7: In Darkness

 

 

Empty.

 

My nest, my night.

Feed me. Feed me your children. Feed me your souls.

You killed us, you tortured us. But I will reign again, and my night will never end.

I am coming. You are so feeble against me. Thinking you can stop me. I will scatter your bones to the stars.

To see me is to tremble. To see me is to fail. My time is coming.

You think you are so wise.

Idiot lords of time.

I have you.

 

 

 

 

 

_Twinkle twinkle little star...._

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

The tracker in Martha’s hand screams and bursts, scattering glass and fizzling wires across the mud. It’s sudden. Martha didn’t have time to let go and now there is a burn and a cut across her right palm. It stings terribly, but she barely feels it. She’s spinning, turning in place, calling out:

“Jack!”

But he’s gone, and so is the Doctor, and Benton. There’s just the eerily quiet road, the grass shifting in the breeze, and the still tableau of the UNIT jeep and Bessie standing like props on a stage before the curtain is drawn and the players step out. Somewhere, a cricket chirps.

“Where are you?” asks Martha, her sanity slipping. “This isn’t funny!” It’s not, and she knows it’s not a joke. Her footsteps echo off the pavement as she runs between the two vehicles, searching and not finding. Her hand is bleeding freely and, calming herself, she rummages an aid kit out of the back of the UNIT jeep. It probably needs stitches, but she does the best she can with antiseptic, clean cloth, and a few painkillers. Her hand taken care of, she searches out the jeep’s radio.

She doesn’t know the right channel or the military codes to recite if she finds it, but she gleaned some practical knowledge of shortwave over the year. She flips through the frequencies. All she gets is static, and she knows that can’t be right; all of the channels can’t be dead.

“This is Martha Jones,” she says to each crackling flick of the dial, “I’m with UNIT. We have personnel down. Requesting back-up.”

Nothing.

“Why won’t you answer?” she pleads. She puts down the receiver but leaves the radio on. She steps out of the jeep.

“Doctor, why do you always have to disappear just when I need you?”

She wanders back to the rutted dirt track. She looks at the remains of the tracker, half sunk into a mud puddle. There’s nothing else for it; she takes a brave breath and steps forward.

There’s a rickety structure at the end of the winding track, Martha can’t decide if it’s a shed, a barn, or something else entirely. She'd noticed it before. Even without the tracker, Martha is sure that the leaning building is the source of the time distortions. It glowers, and hunches, and gives off all the stereotypical airs of a haunted house. As Martha approaches, she feels like she is being watched.

A smell stands on its head in the warm summer breeze; something unnatural and electric with a faint back-breath of rot. Martha can see nothing but dark between the building’s widely-spaced slat walls. She creeps around its side to the door.

It opens easily, swinging back on loose hinges, and the stink multiplies. Martha gags, but catches herself with a deep, shuddering breath. She has smelled worse things in her life. The stink is bad, but not overpowering. She can cope. She lifts the collar of her shirt over her nose and takes a few steps forward.

The barn seems averse to light. Despite the open door, the cracks in the walls, and the cheery noon sun outside, it remains dark inside. Straw, or something like it, shifts and pops underfoot. Martha blinks in the gloom, analysing shapes and forms. She knows what she sees. She knows, but several moments pass before the fact clicks into her mind and she realises that she is leaning hard against a crooked, wide-spaced wall gasping into the fresh air and sunlight on the other side of the gaps.

She is a doctor — almost. Death should not bother her. She saw many worse things than this over the year that never was, but that’s the problem again. She saw so many things that now a feather knocks her over, and this is a very harsh feather: bodies, lots of bodies. They are laid into a circle, heads facing in, legs splayed out like petals or pinwheel spokes. Their eyes…

Martha swallows hard and forces herself to look and continue her analysis, hard, unemotional, and disconnected. The bodies have no eyes. They stare towards the barn’s broken ceiling with bloodied holes. Martha looks up and sees stars through the much-perforated roof. They are not normal; they are silver droplets in an infinite ocean of black, and she feels herself slipping. She’s seen those stars up close. She’s sailed that ocean. There’s a terrible pain behind her eyes and at first she thinks it might be the beginning of tears, but it’s more sinister than that. It increases and it’s like the stars are playing tug-of-war with her retinas.

Martha quickly averts her gaze and blinks a few times to clear the after image. Her head is groaning and she has to fight the desire to look up again. When she peeks out through the gaps in the wall she sees daylight and rolling moor. The electricity in the air gets sharper and Martha feels her hair being buoyed up by the static.

She looks again at the flower of eyeless bodies. Their heads frame a little patch of dirt floor. The earth in that small space is pulsating like something is trying to push its way through. Martha thinks on the Doctor — the white-haired, capes and frills Doctor — and his words: an utterly destructive extra-dimensional anomaly. It’s already taken Jack, and Benton with his dopey half-smile. It’s taken the Doctor, both of him, and she wonders if she will be next and if this will be the way it ends.

Something grabs her shoulder and she can’t help but jump. The hand is cold and somehow familiar. She turns her head to see a well-built, but short man with a salt and pepper beard and distinguished eyes. His hand is not hard on her shoulder, and it quickly withdraws. Martha finds herself drawn in by the man’s eyes. There’s a clarity to them, a glimpse into infinity that she associates with the Doctor, and she wonders momentarily if this might be him… another him, or the same him, or him rebuilt from the desperate pin-striped creature she’s grown to love.

“My dear,” says the man, and his voice is kind, but his breath is heavy with cigar smoke and there is something vaguely unsettling about the way he doesn’t blink, “whatever could you be doing in my castle?”

In that moment Martha realises who the man must be. She knees him in the groin, bursts from the darkness of the barn, and runs for her life.  



	10. In friendship

Author's Notes:

I really have to give a BIG SHOUT OUT to my betas on this one. Ann_blue and Bewarethespork... you guys are awesome. This chapter is far, far better for your help.

****

Chapter 10: In Friendship

This nowhere, and it is shaped like the barrel of a gun.

Like silver-walled infinity fenced with a coil to guide the bullet. Like an endless well with a black cover pulled over the sky. The bottom of the well is a sharp-edged circle, smooth and clear. A series of thin, black pillars rise from the centre of the floor to grope at the endless black that might be a ceiling (or nothing). The pillars have the rough, pocked look of hardened lava. Scattered between the columns are the bodies of three unconscious men.

Benton is the first to wake, perhaps because he is not as time-touched as the others. He stoically takes in his surroundings, noting, with a pang, the absence of Martha. He hopes she is safe, and wonders if he is dead. He cocks his head to the side, trying to remember if he died and what that was like, but that last things he remembers are the road and the jeep and Martha wandering off ahead. His head rather hurts, so he decides, practically, that if he is dead than it’s not much different from life and he had better go check that the Doctor and Mr. Captain Jack are all right hadn’t he?

Just as Benton completes that thought, Captain Jack gives a rather loud moan and starts moving. Benton ignores the ache in his head (it grinds like a tooth ache, and is dizzy as a concussion.) He ignores the pain and queasiness (because really, it isn’t terribly bad, and he isn’t seeing double or anything concerning like that, even if the world is a bit fuzzy.) He creeps to the Captain’s side.

"Welcome back," Benton says, leaning over as Jack as the Captain slowly blinks his eyes open, groaning at the effort.

"Oooh, that'll do your head in," are the captain's first words. He tries to stretch and sit up, but falls back quickly with an 'oooooh, bad idea' expression scrawled across his face and body language. Benton gives the Captain a sympathetic shoulder squeeze.

“Easy does it,” says Benton.

Jack blinks again. He smiles a wide, flashing grin. "You know, if we survive this, I really do have to ask you out for a drink."

Benton smiles back, completely misconstruing the Captain’s flirtations. For Benton, Jack's words bring forward thoughts of UNIT's Friday night binges down at the pub (only for off-duty staff of course, and only when there were no pressing invasions). Nine times out of ten on those excursions Benton (or Yates, or a clueless new recruit who didn't know better) would end up being drunk under the table by the Doctor's hardy constitution, and would finish the evening with embarrassing half-memories of singing show tunes, out of tune, from the counter tops. The other one time out of ten it would be the Doctor who ended up singing, usually Opera music that might have been human or alien for all that anyone could understand it, and those were _really_ the nights to remember — especially that one golden night when the Brigadier let his guard drop and jumped up onto the…

But the Doctor has hardly attended pub night in the past few months, and when he does show he's been a grump and a spoilsport and a dark cloud huffing out the door before the night is half done (like he was when he first joined UNIT). He's been like that since Miss. Grant, married that Welshman, and everyone on staff feels the loss; of Miss Grant as well as the Doctor’s antics.

Back in nowhere, Benton's smile drops along with his train of thoughts. Jack's grin falls also and their little moment of camaraderie is swept aside by the more pressing concerns of here and now. Tend the wounded. Defeat the bad guy. Save the day.

Benton and Jack turn their attentions to the still-prone Doctor. The Time Lord seems to be having a harder time returning to consciousness than either of them. There is a dark smudge over his left temple, which looks like the beginnings of a bruise. Benton doesn't know if the injury resulted from the Doctor bashing his head when they all collapsed, or if someone hit the Doctor at an unknown point during their transit from the road and the UNIT jeep to here.

The Doctor wakes up, finally. There's no big production about it, no moaning or groaning or dazed blinking into the light. The Doctor wakes up and sits up without any apparent trace of pain or dizziness. He prods at his bruise a bit and frowns, but doesn't mention it.

"Are you all right?" Benton asks, offering a steadying arm, which obviously isn't needed. The Doctor brushes it away.

"That was another time distortion, wasn't it?" asks Jack.

The Doctor moves from prodding his bruise to stroking his chin. His brow furrows, and Benton knows that he is deep in thought.

"Do you hear that?" the Doctor asks, resting the flat of his hand against one of the tall, stone columns. Jack copies the movement, and so does Benton. The rough stone is warm and buzzing.

"It's alive!" Jack exclaims, withdrawing his hand.

"It's the Master's TARDIS," says the Doctor, calmly, "but I'd like to know what he's been doing to it. Poor girl's in agony. He's remodelled, but it's more than that…" He strokes the pillar absently. A spark leaps off the sculpted rock to bite the flesh between his finger and thumb. The Doctor shakes his hand ruefully. "Like Time Lord, like TARDIS," he says, smiling slightly.

"What I want to know is how we ended up here," Benton asks, putting one hand safely in his lap, and the other by his gun, or rather, where his gun should be; He still has the holster, but the weapon has been removed.

"Probably… a freeze snatch?" asks Jack, and Benton notices that the captain's right hand is also creeping towards a non-existent firearm.

The Doctor nods.

"And what is that when it's at home?" asks Benton.

"It's… the Time Agency used them," Jack explains, "for securing prisoners. It speeds up time in one small pocket so that the person holding the control can grab you and whisk you out, taking all the time they want in the pocket, but not taking any more than half a nanosecond in real-time. To someone watching from the sidelines a freeze snatched person is just — poof, there one second, gone the next. It’s smooth and professional but hell on the fuel efficiency. You got to be pretty damn important to get yourself freeze-snatched by the agency.”

"It's appalling," the Doctor elaborates, "Every use rips a tear through the vortex itself and scatters patches of bleeding time across the web. The High Council banned the use of such things millennia back. Granted, that never stopped them from using the technology themselves, the hypocrites."

"Are they involved with it then sir?” asks Benton, “These agency people? Or the Time Lords?”

"No," says the Doctor, "it's the Master, but it doesn't make sense. He wouldn't have the technology, and he should know better… operating such a sloppy mechanism with so many other time disturbances and paradoxes already present…" The Doctor shakes his head. His voice is at a level between an enraged shout and a disbelieving whisper. "It's simply not sane. It like he _wants_ to implode the cosmos, but, completely addled he may be, I cannot see _The Master_ —"

"Yes, well, in all respect. It's not _your_ Master we're talking about, is it?" interrupts Jack. "I mean, people change, and the Master I'm thinking of is more than a few peanuts short of the nuthouse. He isn’t sane, not even slightly."

Following Jack’s words there is a heavy silence.

The Doctor reaches out his hand, as if to stroke the sparking black pillar again, but seems to think better of it and withdraws. "I suppose it was always a foolish thought…" he murmurs.

Benton has an idea what the Doctor is thinking. He’s watched the Doctor and Master sparing and knows that there used to be friendship between the two men. He knows that the Doctor cares for the man after some fashion and dreams that, one day, the shifty-eyed toad will repent and be a friend once more. Benton can sympathise to some degree, though, personally, he believes that the Master is always, and will always be, insane and a leopard can't change its spots.

“Not much going to get done with all of us sitting around is there?” says Benton, breaking the gloom.

“Yes, very wise,” says the Doctor. He stands up briskly and paces the circumference of the room before tapping on a glinting section of wall that looks no different from any other. It swings open to reveal a door and a hallway; a way out of nowhere.

"Not a very well built cell," Jack observes.

"We aren't meant to be trapped," the Doctor says grimly, stepping into the chrome-arched passage on the other side of the opening.

Benton tests out his feet and finds that he can stand with minimal swaying. Beside him, Jack also makes his way to an upright position.

"I smell a trap," Jack says, as he and Benton follow the Doctor out into the hall.

Benton agrees as the door slides shut behind them, vanishing into the wall as if it never were.

 

 

***

 

 

Martha runs.

She veers off the muddy driveway and into the brushy field, which separates the barn from the main road. Martha is taking the shortest route possible back to the UNIT jeep and safety. Thorns scratch at her ankles, her feet catch in the roots of a scrabby tree growing alone in the scrub, and she is falling, falling, falling, but this grass isn't nice. It isn't soft, or kind, or even particularly green.

Martha clutches at the yellowed locks of vegetation, dry as drought despite the evidence of recent rain in the driveway's mud. She clutches, and tries to pull herself to her feet, but her ankle is twisted and she cries out in anger and frustration. She hates the world right now, and she hates grass, and she hate, hate, hates the Master.

Martha knows it's him, she didn't know it at first, but the knowledge came as soon as he spoke, as soon as he tried to calm her, and she realised that the tempo of his speech followed a familiar beat. Or, perhaps, the realisation came before that, when she had looked at a stranger and, for a moment only, trusted him completely and absolutely. Like she trusts the Doctor only, more… And she, Martha Jones, never trusts anyone implicitly (except for Harold Saxon, and Professor Yana who seemed so _good_ ), even the Doctor had to prove his worth when they first met.

Martha hates having her mind controlled.

She waits for his steady footsteps to come up behind her. It isn't _him_ , him. She doesn’t know if it's a future him, or a past him, and she really doesn't care; it's the Master. He's evil. A destroyer of worlds. The destroyer of her world.

She waits.

There it is. She hears it: feet crushing grass, a slow, measured step. A pause.

Martha can feel his shadow on her back. He's going to speak now. She can hear the anticipation of his voice cutting across the warm summer breeze, chilling it. She can still taste the wrongness of the barn against the back of her throat. It sticks like vomit. Above her, the sky is very blue, marred by the footprints of aeroplanes and tiny clouds. The ground feels warmer than it should beneath her fingers.

"You are Martha Jones," he says.

Martha hunkers deeper into the dead grass, as if it can offer shelter, but she is disgusted at herself for this reaction. She doesn't want to die like this; She will not die like this, cowering like a dog. He is not, and never will be her master.

_She's cowering under a bridge. The remains of the stream which once flowed there — all thick mud and offal and oil now — squishes around her knees. Limp, blight-spotted rushes provide walls to her crude shelter, and she has bent a few of them under her legs in a futile attempt at making a platform to keep off the muck. She can hear dogs barking in the distance. Mosquitoes feast on her hands and ankles and neck. She shivers — her sweater isn't warm enough for the season. It is autumn in this country, on this continent, wherever she is… there is frost in the air. The distant dogs fall disturbingly silent and, somewhere, a Toclafane laughs…_

Martha forces herself to stop slipping. She refuses to let her memories overwhelm her. She flips herself round to face her enemy, to stare dead into his deep, ruthless eyes: twin ice chips, blazing fires of passion and infinity. A calm, gentlemanly mask surrounds them. She can't help but think of the Doctor; the Master and him are of the same ilk; Lords of Time, and Martha Jones is sick of being a prop to their epic battles across the stars. She is as good as them. She meets the Master’s stare and refuses to look away or blink.

"I am Martha Jones," she says, strong and proud and damn well indomitable on her hands and knees in the dirt, "I beat you once and I'll beat you again."

"Good," says the Master, surprising her. He extends a hand to help her up. His jaw seems to tighten, like he's clenching his teeth, but he isn't. "Because, Ms. Jones…" He hisses slightly, as if it hurts him to keep his voice so kind and calm.

Martha's heartbeat quickens further behind her façade. The Master gazes at her with pity and contempt, and something else, something…

Martha realises that, with his neat trimmed goatee and square brow, this Master looks more than a little like a cartoon character; a mere caricature of evil; something silly and harmless from a children's television show. Nothing to fear. She lets out a nervous little giggle and misses what he says. Well, not quite misses, but she doesn't believe it.

If he is angered by her indifference, he doesn't let it show. He continues offering his hand.

"Ms. Jones please," he says, still with the voice of a gentleman, "Under recent circumstances, I can comprehend how you might be disinclined to accept my aid; however, I do not think you realise how privileged you are to be receiving it. Had I wanted you dead you would not be enjoying the sunlight currently."

Martha shudders, knowing this to be true, and knowing that this Master may be more dangerous to her than the one she fought and eluded over the paradox year. That Master was dangerous in his insanity and unpredictability. This Master, she feels, is more settled, and more apt to keep his promises — for good or for ill. However, she does not for an instant believe him to be honest or moral and she is sure that, whatever aid he is offering, it comes with strings attached.

"What do you want?" she asks.

"My dear Ms. Jones," he says, "It pains me to say it, but I want your help."  



	11. In Madness

Author's Notes:

Thanks again to my patient beta's Bewarethespork and Ann_blue who both have devoted so much time and enthusiasm to this saga. I'm sorry for the long wait for this chapter. Hopefully the next one will be faster, though, at this point I can't make any promises. It will come though!

  
****

Chapter 11: In Madness

 

The Doctor, Benton and Jack wander, delving ever deeper into the heart of the beast. The darkly reflective walls of the Master’s TARDIS seem to throb with a burning heartbeat. There is a faint pattern of circles etched into their mirrored surface; “roundels”, Jack says. “Like the deeper parts of your TARDIS. Doesn’t feel like your TARDIS though.”

“She’s not like my TARDIS,” the Doctor says, and does not elaborate. Benton understands why. It’s difficult to sustain conversation in this place, and, in any case, the differences between this place and the Doctor's ship are pretty damn obvious.

There is a muffled kind of silence, an impossible-to-ignore roar, which is distinctly unfriendly. It sets Benton’s teeth on edge almost as much as the shifting corridors. Every now and again the group reaches a dead end, forcing them to fallback and retrace their steps. Every now and again a door, not seen before, slams shut behind them to block retreat, or opens to reveal a new path. Benton feels like a rat in a maze being shunted from place to place.

_Slip, click._

That is the sound it makes when a new door slides open.

_Slip, click._

And a treacherous noise of a panel behind them slamming shut, forcing the trio down yet another new course. The colour scheme changes with each redirection. The walls in this corridor are dull indigo. The floor resembles linoleum tiling and reminds Benton of the barracks he trained at when he first joined the service.

The sound of their footsteps is muffled. It is not the usual _clack, clack_ , Benton would expect of army boots on tile (if he expected anything of this mad house, and he doesn’t). The silence is brooding, and Benton feels like there’s something in the air that’s trying to get into his skull.

"Is Martha okay?" Jack asks, suddenly.

"I don't know," says the Doctor, and Jack looks ready to murder someone. "She isn't here. Either she was out of range of the snatch or —"

"Or what?" interrupts Jack. “I know what happens to people caught on the edge of a freeze snatch.”

Benton doesn’t know what happens to people caught on the edge of a freeze snatch, but he’s not stupid, and he has some vivid ideas (which he tries to suppress) of what being caught in the middle of a time rift might do to a person. He remembers the TOMTIT experiments, and what it felt like to be de-aged.

"I built some protections and fail-safes into the tracker," the Doctor says. "As long as it remains intact, it should protect her from most destructive time distortions, whether from the anomaly or from sloppy technology. Failing that, I gave her a personal shielding device."

"So she's safe?" says Jack.

"She's where we left her," says the Doctor. "And she is a very clever and resourceful young woman."

That she is, thinks Benton, noting how the Doctor skirted the question. Benton fears for Martha’s safety, but he has confidence in her. If half of what he’s heard about her is true, then she is an amazing woman, and she certainly does have spunk. He rubs at his arm ruefully where she bit him. In his experience, any woman associated with the Doctor has amazing force of character.

“Frankly, sir,” says Benton, “I think it’s us we should be more worried about. If we’re in the Master’s lair so to speak, and she’s still free outside, then I think she’s a good sight better off than us.”

“Unless the lion is out hunting,” says Jack.

Benton rubs at his bite bandage again. “The lion might get more than he bargained for if he tries to tackle Ms. Jones.”

Jack grins at the comment.

“Indeed,” says the Doctor.

They continue walking.

 _Slip, click._ Another door. Another passage. This one is paler, starting grey and fading to white as they walk. The floor sparkles like polished granite.

_Slip, click._

The trio step from the white hall into a rounded room with a central pillar. This column is white, lumpy, and dotted with pink flashing lights. This is the middle of the maze. Beside the pillar stands a gangly man with a slight paunch to his jowls and bugging blue eyes. His face is shaven — recently, and not very well if the little nicks across his chin and upper lip are any indication. There’s a whole patch of not-quite-ginger stubble he’s missed on the right side. The man wears an immaculate, tailored black suit, and, though the body is different, the Master requires no introduction.

He claps, slowly, a sardonic congratulations to the clever little lab rats who found the cheese. A wire birdcage sits by his foot, imprisoning a shrivelled, pitiful form.

"Doctor!" shouts Jack, rushing towards the cage, heedless of the danger. The Master stops clapping, pulls out a sleek, black gun, and shoots.

Jack falls.

"That was unnecessary," says the Doctor.

"But fun," says the Master, brushing at a spatter of brain and bone fragments over his left breast pocket. Benton’s hand again unconsciously migrates to his empty holster, even as he realises that the gun the Master fired is his own. The Master blows imaginary steam off the tip of the weapon and then levels it at Benton.

“I wonder how you will react when I shoot a friend of yours who doesn’t bounce back?” The Master giggles insanely at his comment. Benton stiffens, but refuses to back down.

“I warn you…” the Doctor says, his voice falling to an even more dangerous rumble. It is like the shifting of the earth before a quake.

“Or what?” the Master asks, still giggling like a lunatic. Benton’s momentary fear is replaced with irritation as the Master flips _his_ gun around his finger almost playfully, before levelling it at Benton’s chest. Benton is glad that Ms. Jones is not present, even if her present whereabouts are a mystery. Spunk she might have, but Benton would hate to see her get shot down by the Master.

“You’ll get your come-uppance,” Benton says to the Master, with as much force as he can muster, and then smiles, because he knows it’s true. He’s on the right side, and the Doctor always wins. And then, he’ll see Ms. Jones again, and worry again about having the wrong words and a daft look.

“Is that so Sergeant?” asks the Master, rhetorically, because a moment later the gun goes off, Benton falls back from the impact, and the Doctor is at his side before the shot’s echo has faded.

“I’m fine,” says Benton, from between gritted teeth, as he clutches the wound on his arm. It’s only a graze, Benton thinks, not fatal, and it probably won’t leave lasting damage. He’s had worse.

“What was the point of that?” rages the Doctor. The Doctor doesn’t look at the Master as he speaks: all of his attention is being spent on putting pressure on Benton’s wound. Benton doesn’t understand all the fuss. _“I’m fine”_ he tries to say again, but his lips are dry. He’s feeling strangely faint, which doesn’t make sense, it’s only a little scratch…

The Master shrugs, then whirls and fires the gun again, shooting down Jack who was just in the process of being reborn.

“I demand that you stop this!” says the Doctor.

“I demand that you stop this,” the Master mocks, pulling a fake pout. “Oh please DO come off it already. You don’t seem to get the big picture, but then, you never did. Let me put it bluntly: You. Cannot. Reason. With. Me. I’ve flipped my lid, gone round the bend, or something. Always a danger when you pass your limit on regeneration. Anyway, I’ve gotten past those petty survival instincts which held me back in the past. Now I’m on to greater things.”

“Such as?” the Doctor asks.

“Wholesale destruction,” the Master says, licking his lips.

“The dimensional anomaly?” the Doctor asks.

“Yes, well, it’s my past self who cooked that one up. I just lent a helping hand. Otherwise, he would have got himself cooked. He’s at the end of his natural regeneration cycle you know? Woooweee, that was an unpleasant few centuries that followed, nearly drove me mad.”

“He’s what?’ the Doctor asks, and his voice is — there’s too much there. Benton can’t decipher it — anger, fear, reproach, betrayal… it doesn’t process properly. Everything is getting muggy. Benton thinks that he wants to get up and clock the Master. Teach him a lesson.

Instead, he passes out.

 

 

*

 

 

_my time is coming,_

closer now

idiot Lords of Time, i will feed, i will live, i will rule

 

 

no one will be my master, and i will be confined no more,

i feel the time,

the waves of it, i must have more

do you feel me sergeant? little creature, feeble little thing,

will you feed me with your blood?

i am coming

 

 

fear me

 

 

*

 

 

“And what makes you think I would ever help you?” Martha says to the Master. She gets up on her own, not taking his offered hand. The thought of touching the Master makes her feel a bit sick. “After all you did to me? To my family?”

He regards her for a moment before answering, and when he does his voice is smooth and dismissive, as if he were a favourite uncle apologising for not being able to take her out to brunch, rather than a homicidal maniac explaining away a year of hell.

“My dear, from my perspective said events have not yet transpired. Therefore, there is no reason for you to be hostile.”

“I’m not your dear, and there is every reason for me to be hostile,” Martha says.

“Perhaps.” He plays with his hands, fingers curling around each other. “However, as you do not wish for the universe to combust perhaps you would be so kind as to listen to what I have to say.”

“How can I trust you?” Martha asks.

“Very well,” the Master says. He shrugs out of his suit jack, handing the item of clothing to a reluctant Martha. Then he grasps the hem of his shirt and pulls it up to reveal a long, red welt. “That,” he says, “occurred three days ago. I do not believe I would have survived if it had not been for the timely interruptions of my future self.” He pulls down his shirt quickly, covering the wound.

“I had a plan,” he goes on, “a scheme of sorts, to gain power, to annoy the dear Doctor. Life is so tedious without these little distractions you understand?”

“It hasn’t been three days,” says Martha, doing maths in her head. “I’ve been out for most of it, but it hasn’t been three days.”

“Time is in flux,” says the Master. “Backwards is forwards, and little rips are forming across the countryside. I’ve no doubt _he_ slipped through one, and in doing so bought himself a bit more time. There is a creature Ms. Jones. It lives within the void itself. It is timeless, and shapeless, and powerful. I thought it would help me with a little problem I have, but I seem to be growing foolish in my old age. The man who rescued me claimed to be my future self. He told me that he had come back to this juncture to aid me in achieving my immortality. Like a fool, I believed him.”

“And what is that supposed to mean,” Martha says, “except that you’ve as good as admitted that you’re responsible for this whole mess?”

“He is not me,” the Master says with conviction. “I wished for life. What evil do you see in that? I am old, and tired. A harmless dotard looking for a second chance.” He stares at Martha, his eyes burrowing into hers. She feels the tendrils of his mind reaching out to grab at her.

“Stop it,” she says, hating how small her voice sounds.

“That man is a creature born out of zombie DNA. He is unstable, and unpredictable. He saved me only to keep the creature I summoned within this universe. He wants to create a paradox.”

“There’s already a great big paradox going on, in case you haven’t noticed,” says Martha.

“He wants to kill a Time Lord. He wants to destroy the universe.”

“How does killing a Time Lord destroy the… oh,” Martha trails off. Her mind is filled with paradoxes: humans from the end of the universe that never happened, that might have been, but weren’t, and Time Wars, and Daleks, and Carrionites who would have, but didn’t, but still might kill Shakespeare. And how would all of _that_ change history. Martha isn’t sure where all of these thoughts are coming from. They are her own memories (or, at least most of them are, she thinks), but the ways they are twisting and conecting are alien. She sees and understands the nexus points when she doesn’t quite know what a nexus point is. She sees stars folding in on themselves and orange skies burning.

She thinks it must have something to do with the velvet-voiced, deboiner old man in front of her. His brow is crinkled. His eyes are locked with Martha’s and she cannot turn away.

“The Doctor is, I hate to admit, a very influential man in certain circles of the cosmos,” the Master says, adding a verbal explanation to the images painting their pictures of maybe's and might-not-be's Martha’s mind. “To hold two incarnations of the same individual at different parts in his life within one timeframe is a paradox in itself, and very unstable. The limitation effect does not apply to Time Lords, but the creature can still feed off the run-off. Kill the Doctor in his younger incarnation and the results — I ask you again Ms. Jones. Will you help me?”

Martha thinks she must have been hypnotised, because she says yes.

 

 

 

 

TBC  



	12. In fear

Author's Notes:

and, after much delay...

The first half is from Ten's rather messed up POV, and hopefully makes some adled sort of sense. Many thanks to Ann_blue for the beta.

**In Fear**

 

 

The world is tinted milky white by the Doctor’s cataracts. When the gun fires again and again into Jack, and once, terribly, into Sergeant Benton, all that the Doctor’s age-deafened ears can make out are muffled thuds, like far away footsteps. There’s so much he needs to say, to make understood, but his mouth/tongue/larynx won’t cooperate, and even if they would do he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what to say or how to say it —

A Time Lord’s thoughts are too complex to translate into English, or any human language — the tenses don’t work out. The Doctor spent his time stranded on Earth continually frustrated by his complete inability to express himself.

Of course, on Gallifrey it was no better… is no better? It’s all jumbled, because he can hear the omnipresent telepathic rumbling of other Time Lords, and he can sense Gallifrey on the horizon calling to him, but he _knows_ that Gallifrey is gone, so how can it be here now? Unless he’s dead already…

It’s a double-bind, and the Doctor knows that whatever tongue he uses he’ll never be able to express how he truly feels: The language of humans has no proper recognition of time, but the language of the Time Lords has/had no proper reaction for emotions.

Of course, at the moment, even if he had the perfect language, some sublime blend of high knowledge and bubbling humanity, even then he doubts he could put labels to his current feelings. There is a theory he remembers — Sapir-Whorf was it? — that individuals are shaped by language, and that it is impossible to understand concepts without words. Are there words for what he is now?

He was the Doctor once.

The world is tinted milky white, and everything is disconnected. There are bars both literal and metaphorical between him and reality. He’s in the birdcage again, a defeated old gnome, and the worst part is that he _wants_ to stay trapped, because being helpless is easy. Ignorance is easy.

Time cascades around him, and nothing makes sense. Memories batter at his senses and still he can’t think. He can’t think at all. What is real? What is false? Through blurred mists the Doctor sees Jack and Benton lying on the floor. But Jack and Benton never met — did they?

He sees the Master, laughing, but the Master is dead. He died in the Doctor’s arms, and it’s not okay. Whatever he might lie to others; He’s not all right.

The Master cackles. He always did/does/will cackle, even as a boy. That’s as true as the drums — what drums? There were no drums?

The Doctor flails against his failing senses. The Master laughs (a softer word that: laugh. Yes, he laughed as boy; he was a good man once) and says something (what?). The Doctor’s younger self (the memory-dream) responds, and was it a threat? A challenge? A defiance? Or a submission? The Master leaves the room, and the walls of his TARDIS seal up behind his exit, taking away the door and any chance of escape.

The Doctor’s younger self, the dandy with the white hair and the large nose, is doing something. The Doctor strains to see against the fog. He is/was bandaging Benton’s wound with his cravat. The bullet, the Doctor knows (remembers?), nicked an artery. The wound looks inauspicious, but it might be deadly, if he can’t stop the bleeding.

Is deadly? The Doctor can’t remember. Should he remember? He’s sure that Benton never died like this, that he went on to retire into placidity and sell used cars at a lot.

But this is all only a dream, isn’t it?

_trying so hard to hold on? let go, Time Lord._

let go and come to us…

The Doctor beats his head against the bars. It’s that voice. The voice he can’t escape, whispering at him to give up. He wants to give up so badly, because life is hard. There’s nothing good about it, only hard, and pain, and sad…

 _come to us and weep in eternity,_ whispers the voice.

_feed our hunger and rest._

Yes, he does want to rest…

“Contact.”

There’s a face in front of him, pushing away the voices. The face of the memory Doctor, poised in front of the bars. Jack has shrugged off death and is tending Benton. The young Doctor is stares down the old Doctor through the bars.

“Contact,” the young Doctor says, again, more insistent this time, and the older Doctor wants to fight him off .

_Leave me alone, leave me alone, leavemealoneleavemealone **leavemealone,**_

But he is too weak.

The younger Doctor’s hands, stained dark with Benton’s blood, are unfastening the latch on the older Doctor’s cage. The older Doctor is picked up, and pressed to his younger self’s wrinkled cheek. White hair and blue eyes cut through the fog. The memories are real.

“Contact,” the younger Doctor says, a third time. Three is a good number.

The older Doctor stops fighting. “Contact,” he whispers, his voice like frost-bit leaves giving up autumn to the snow.

 

*

It’s been getting colder.

Martha isn’t sure if she’s trembling from the chill, from being tired, or because the reality of her offer to help _him_ is finally settling in. But the universe and the Doctor are at stake, and the those two things are the same in many ways, even if Martha doesn’t know where she stands with either anymore.

“What do I have to do then?” Martha asks. “To save him.”

“The Doctors and his companions are being held hostage in my time capsule,” says the Master. “That abomination locked me out. Luckily, his memories are as addled as his wits.”

As he speaks, the Master pulls a beaten metal pendant from his pocket. Martha wrinkles her nose. It’s an innocent trinket, but it gives her a queasy feeling.

“This is a key to my ship,” says the Master, and Martha doesn’t like how condescending he has suddenly become.

“You want me to break in; rescue them?” she asks.

The Master smiles. “You are clever. I wonder why he keeps you around? In my experience he doesn’t like to keep friends whose intelligence might even remotely challenge his own. He is terribly insecure you know.”

Martha snatches the key, and glares. A hot breeze rustles the grass around her feet; it’s an undercurrent against the cold air, and not natural. Martha feels fever creeping in her veins, and she doesn’t know if it’s fear, hate, truth, or a side-effect of the whole end of the world thing.

“Where is it?” she asks.

“Close,” he says, still with that infuriatingly polite smile.

She continues glaring, and meeting him eye for eye until he breaks and nods at a nearby shrub. It’s a weedy little thing, and at first Martha doesn’t quite catch on.

“ _I_ have a working chameleon circuit, of course,” he says.

“And what will you be doing?” she asks, “While I’m in there…” she trails off.

“Playing white knight?” he suggests, almost playfully. “I won’t be with you. The two of me together would be yet another paradox; most upsetting to the timelines, and, besides, it is virtually impossible to sneak up on oneself. I’ll be off, playing my own part in the matter, and you will not have to soil yourself with my company again.”

“Good,” says Martha. She is glad to be rid of him, but at the same time she is uneasy about letting him out of her sight.

“It is nice to know one’s little efforts are appreciated,” says the Master.

“So we’re clear; I still don’t trust you,” Martha says.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

Martha doesn’t waste anymore words on him, not when she knows that she isn’t going to get any more answers, and not when time is so dear. She turns and limps toward the shrub, her twisted ankle protests every step but she knows how to deal with worse pain. She knows how to deal with broken hearts and the weight of the universe.

“There you go, brave little Martha Jones,” the Master whispers to himself as she enters the shrub which is not a shrub.. He folds his fingers beneath his chin in a parody of prayer, “go on; save the world.”

The corner of his mouth twitches, and the false smile he used during his conversation with Martha transformers into something which is different, and harder. He pivots on his heel and walks away across the field, back to the dead barn, and the horrors contained within.  



	13. In dreaming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the chapter in which Primsong detected the now infamous cake fic typo:
> 
> "Curled across his lap, restored to his proper age and size, is Martha’s Doctor. He’s apparently naked under the _cake_ that’s been draped over his body for decency and warmth."

Jack knows basic first aid. It’s something you picked up on when your childhood home stood at the turn-stile of two warring fronts. On joining the Time Agency he’d received further, more formal, training; a good agent needed to know how to patch themselves up in the field; then there had been the years fairing on his own, and the years at Torchwood looking out for his team and the errant civilians who always seemed to have a knack for ended up where they ought not (and often in more piece than they ought to be). Maybe he’s no medic, but he has experience. He knows where to press to make the bleeding stop.

Benton is just about conscious, and Jack flashes him a winning smile — one that belies the gnashing, just woke-up-from-being-dead-again pain in his head. That’s another thing Jack’s learned from his long and sorted life: how to put on a face. But then, he’s never been half so good a con-artist as he fancies. Benton is a good honest, steady man. He reminds Jack of Ianto in a powerful way, and, like Ianto, Jack has the uncomfortable feeling that Benton is reading him like a book.

It makes Jack’s smile flicker, and he turns his head from the injured soldier’s woozy gaze.

The Doctor and the Doctor are still linked together quietly on the other side of the room. They’ve been like that since Jack awoke and, even without instruction, Jack knows better than to disturb them; psychic links are tricky things, if he were to accidentally threw off their composure he might kill them both. Still, it takes all of his reserves to keep from running over and shaking them apart. He’s been bred for action, and even a century’s wait in Cardiff topped with a year in chains onboard the Valliant hasn’t taught him patience. Not really.

He rocks on his heels over Benton, keeping pressure on the soggy cravat bandage the Doctor must have applied before slipping off to talk with himself. They look strange together: the wizened Doctor has grown up a bit, is no longer a dwarf, but a child, still wrinkled and old. The younger Doctor is curled around him, large, calloused hands pressed firmly against temples, eyes set in deep concentration. If Jack watches he can see the changes happening, slowly. The Master’s TARDIS hums angrily under Jack’s feet, protesting their ragged group’s small victories.

We still aren’t free, Jack thinks. He rests a cool hand on Benton’s too-warm forehead, hoping that it makes for a small comfort. The Sergeant is stable for now, he thinks, he hopes, but they still aren’t free. They’re snarled in the Master’s trap. The world is still going to end. The white floor is still stained with blood.

*

Blue, green, brilliant yellow. Vibrant. The meteorites fall, blazing through the ruddy atmosphere, natural fireworks. The Doctor lies back on the lawn watching. The stiff blades of russet grass poke between his shoulder blades and are itchy even through his suit. He should have laid down his jacket as blanket, he thinks. It would have saved his rear getting cold and damp from the dew.

He doesn’t have his jacket though, and he isn’t sure where he put it. It’s night, and he’s all alone watching the celestial show, no one left to share it with.

“I’m here,” says the other Doctor. The younger. The Third.

The Doctor refuses to look at him and keeps his eyes trained on the sky as an alternative. The ground is cold, but the air is hot, and dry, and dead. It’s full of dust. It betrays the dream.

“You can’t hide forever,” says the Third.

The Doctor shrugs. He can hide if he wants to, he thinks. He’s done enough, he thinks, it’s really quite mean of himself to expect more.

“Mean am I?” asks the Third. “Perhaps, at times. We aren’t free of faults, only a narcissist like the Master would think that.”

The Doctor flinches at the name; continues to stare at imaginary constellations, looking for answers in fake astronomy.

“But,” the Third continues, “I must say that you are being the most indolent, idiotic, toad-brained, selfish excuse for an intelligent life form I have ever seen!”

The Doctor turns to look at him, letting his gaze drift slowly from the diamond necklace sky to his younger incarnation’s face. The Third has real anger in his furrowed brow and dagger eyes. Real anger, and real pity.

“Are you trying to get a rise out of me?” the Doctor asks.

The Third rubs his chin thoughtfully, and smiles. “A little bit.”

“It won’t work,” the Doctor says, tilting his head upwards again. “I’m tired.”

“Are you now?” asks the Third, sitting down beside him. After a long moment the Doctor lays his head on the Third’s shoulder, and then, with an exhausted slump, in his lap. The Third strokes the youthful head, the soft hair, and the creases of the Doctor’s ear.

“Very, very tired,” says the Doctor.

“Then sleep,” says the Third, his voice dipping into a caressing baritone, into an ancient lullaby from world blown apart by time: “ _Klokleda partha menin klatch, haroon haroon haroon, Klokleda sheenah tierra natch, haroon haroon haroon_ …”

“S’nice,” the Doctor mumbles, “except I don’t have three eyes.”

“Shhh,” says the Third, “rest.”

*

The Master’s TARDIS is bloody malevolent, Martha thinks, picking herself up off the tiled floor for what feels like the umpteenth time. She’s almost dead certain that the ground has been raising itself up and purposely tripping her, but then, that could just be her ankle protesting her refusal to give it a rest.

“Just keeps getting better and better”, she mutters under her breath. This particular stretch of TARDIS hallway is the colour of dried urine and smells about the same. Martha is getting increasingly fed-up and more and more certain that the Master has lied to her. She thinks that she would run back and give him what for, except that she doesn’t know her way back.

Bloody hell. She feels like an idiot for letting him trick her.

“You just go in there and find your friends,” she says, miming his voice. “And I’ll go off and do other things. No, I won’t tell you the rest of the plan. Go on then, be a good and gullible little girl.”

“I hate Time Lords,” she grimaces from between clenched teeth.

It’s then that she hears singing. And it’s _him_ , the younger Doctor, she’s certain of it. She ups her pace, putting more stress on her sprained ankle than is good for it, but then, what’s a bum ankle when the world’s about to blow up? And she’s had worse.

She turns corners. The lights dim until she’s clutching at the walls, following the curves of the younger Doctor’s baritone voice, trusting it to guide her. She can feel the Master’s TARDIS hissing insults beneath her fingers. It shoots out the occasional mild shock but that doesn’t deter her. Martha turns another corner and finds a door. It’s slim, and metal, and locked.

The singing is obviously coming from the other side.

The Master’s TARDIS seems to laugh. ‘Ha, tricked you.’ Martha beats on the door. She can hear Jack on the other side:

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me.”

“Martha!” Jack says, in a palatable tone of relief despite the modular effects of the door dividing them. “You’re alive.”

“Very much so.”

“What are you doing here?” Jack asks.

“Saving you,” says Martha, and with that she whips out the key that the Master gave her. The silent laughter which had been rippling along the TARDIS’s hallways immediately stops.

“That’s what I thought,” says Martha as she swings the door open.

She sees Jack, looking worse for the wear with blood spattered and dried down the left side of his face. One eye is caked closed with the residue, but under the gore he looks good as ever. He grins at Martha and she smiles distantly back. She sees Benton on the floor, looking far less composed and dangerously pale. She sees the younger Doctor, hunched on the far side of the room, singing. Curled across his lap, restored to his proper age and size, is Martha’s Doctor. He’s apparently naked under the cape that’s been draped over his body for decency and warmth.

“Shhh,” says the younger Doctor, halting his alien lullaby for a moment, “don’t wake him.”

Martha wants to cry, to rejoice, to dance around singing, and to fall to the ground and join her Doctor in his slumber. Instead she gives a curt nod and kneels down next to Benton to give what aid she can.

“We should move out, now that the door is open,” Jack says.

“When the Doctor wakes up,” says Martha. She checked the makeshift bandage on the sergeant’s wound. It’s soaked, but she doesn’t have anything thing to replace it with aside from her jacket, and its hardly sterile after crawling around in the grass. Not that denim would make a terribly effect dressing in any case.

Still, simple pressure seems to have slowed the flow. Martha looks at Jack and gives him the universe “good job” look. It’s tempered with worry. The bleeding isn’t stopped. If this were A&E and Stoker were questioning, she’d recommend a transfusion. She takes his pulse. It’s still strong, thankfully, Benton is apparently made out of sterner stuff than his awkward attempts at flirting would imply.

Jack doesn’t ask if he’ll be alright. No one’s going to be alright if they don’t fix whatever it is that the Master has done. The universe will shatter and that will be that. The fact that they need to get the sergeant to a hospital is implicit and doesn’t need mentioning.

Martha does her best with what she has. She knows that shock can be more deadly than the wound itself, and while her jacket might not work as a bandage it can certainly serve the purpose it was created for and help keep the wounded man warm. It’s not big enough, but it’s something.

For a long while, all they do is wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I ended up putting the characters into an impossible situation and couldn't figure out how to get them out with Benton bleeding to death. The TARDIS's state of grace (which, I suppose, even the Master's TARDIS must have in some shape or form) was going to be my hand-wavey way out that one.
> 
> What was supposed to happen next:
> 
> Delgado Master would succeed in performing his ceremony, but the creature would turn on him kill him. Three and Ten would use the Bimovitch limitation effect and the paradox of them both being in the same place at the same time to defeat the monster, somehow. The author created ginger!Master would aid in this and be turned into the crispy Master as seen at the beginning of the Deadly Assassin. The resulting time lash would send Ten, Jack, Martha, and the corpse of the original Master back in time several days to just after when they first arrived in the 70s. Ten, Jack, and Martha would then steal their own TARDIS and run away, completing a loop. Ten would then proceed with the burning on the lake scene, but the body in the boat would be different.
> 
> One day, maybe, this will be written out properly. It has been clear in my head for seven years, but I can never seem to get it down and now, whatever juice originally fuelled this story has well and truly dried up and I just can't get back into the groove of writing it. If anyone else wants to attempt it, or to write a completely different ending, you are welcome to try.


End file.
